by Phoebe North
I closed my eyes, remembering the days between the departure of the first probe and the news that the results had been lost. They’d been long, lonely days—and even darker nights. Until I saw him for the first time in the black of evening, drifting through my dreams. He must have lost her then, in the days before he was mine.
I could almost see it. The dust in the air. The crush of bodies. Velsa, on her way to her towering university in the south of the city. She and her friends had traced their favorite river, hoping to see the long painted boats whose multicolored flags flickered in the wind. But the pier was crowded and then there was a shout. Someone had found a strange machine in the water, with wide metal wings and eyes that blinked like beacons. It was covered in text, words no one could read.
But as the Ahadizhi dock workers began to pull the panels of the machine back, they smelled flesh on the air. Strange, alien odors in every fingerprint that had been left on the metal hull. They bared their teeth—gripped their weapons. Double-bladed knives gleamed in the sunlight. The crowd pushed forward, closer to the scent of danger. Velsa found herself swept up in the tide of bodies.
If I pushed harder, deeper, I would find the truth myself, feel the pain of the dagger’s thrust and the rush of sweet sap down the front of her robe. But I knew it would hurt him to have those memories turned over again like dirt for a fresh planting. So I drew back.
I’m sorry, I said silently, but I regretted that thought almost instantly. I’d heard those words said at Momma’s funeral and at Abba’s, and at least a hundred times in the dark days since. Once, I’d rolled my eyes, cracking awkward jokes and laughing. Why? I always said. It’s not your fault. I knew that my condolences were meager, nothing compared to the grief he felt. His sadness dragged me down too, like a boat that had sprung a leak and sank into the ocean. I was sorry, so sorry, and it wasn’t nearly enough.
When he spoke, it was as if every word came with great effort. “We never mated. I was fallow until tonight. There would have been no children. But on the day she died, I understood something I never had before then. How a lousk is not merely a rare shadow, fleeing to the funerary fields. He is possessed. He will tear his flesh with his fingers, cast his body down to the soil. I should have done this dozens of days ago. My dead, fallow body has wanted it—to be with her, to be together.”
He wants to kill himself, I realized. Now it was my turn to harden beside him. My hands dropped down into the sheets. I watched him sitting there, his shoulders hunched up and still.
“It is the only thing left for a lousk to do,” he said. As if it were nothing, as if it were natural. I suppose for him it was. “But I saw something in the darkness. A face. The pale muzzle of an animal, with a mane of tangled gold. She wandered the dreamforests. I asked her for her name, but she did not answer me. Night after night I dream of her. She touched me, and I felt—”
“Whole,” I said, finishing his sentence for him.
“I was remiss,” he said, “In my duty to Velsa. I should have rushed home, laying my body down on top of hers. We should have been one. But I was curious. And then the senate came to me. There were glyphs on the machine, and recordings embedded in it. They knew I was gifted in foreign tongues. They asked me to translate. I did. It was easy—too easy. I studied many years in Aisak Ait, but never had a language slipped so freely from my lips. I knew things I shouldn’t have. Soon your shuttle crew stumbled through the gates of Raza Ait. There was violence again, fear at these foreign beasts. The senate asks me to speak to these animals. You, who have brought Velsa’s death. Broker a peace. They say I am the only one who can. I decide I will help them. Then I will be with Velsa, as I should. But I met you.”
I drew in a slow breath, pulling my legs up to my chest. Our bodies were so different—his legs so much longer and leaner than my own. But somehow I managed to sit in a perfect mirror of him, my arms hugging my knees, my shoulders high.
“I didn’t expect you either,” I said. “But I’ve been dreaming about you for months and months.”
“Me too, since the night Velsa left me,” he admitted. “An animal girl, with a wild swirl of hair. Wrong, I thought it was wrong. I thought I was a freak.”
I smiled despite the heavy weight of the night. For all those months he’d felt just as strange and broken as I had. He let his violet tongue wet his full lips and went on.
“Then, after, every night since, without fail. There you are. Animal girl, hair the color of morning. I think, maybe this is what happens to lousku. They go mad. But here with you, I do not feel mad. I feel—what is the word?”
I reached out, wrapping my fingers around his.
Sane?
Yes, this, he agreed. He drew my hand against his chest. I could feel the laughter there, weak but growing. Not all sane. But a little sane.
I wanted to tell him that I felt that way too. Better when I was beside him. Less crazy. Less wrong. But I didn’t have to say it. As he pressed his lips to mine, a thousand blossoms turned their faces toward the light inside my mind.
• • •
Will you still do it?
The night had passed its darkest hour. Now the sky was turning dull gray at the corners. Soon the light would go green, then gold again, and the night would be over. There were so many stones still left unturned, so much about him I still didn’t know. I wanted more than a night. I was selfish. I wanted a lifetime.
“Taot?”
Vadix had tucked an arm over his head and gone still, utterly still. Without breath or heartbeat his sleep seemed as deep as death. It wasn’t until he jerked himself awake and turned toward me, black eyes shining, that I was at all reassured.
Will you still do it? Will you still go to the funerary fields?
I felt his cool body stiffen beside me. Though his long legs still touched mine, it felt like he was halfway across the galaxy. He spoke aloud, lonely words.
“It is my nature, Terra. This is how new life is made for my people. We live all our days together, sleep our winters away with our bodies tangled around the same stem. And then we return to the dreamforests, hand in hand.”
I felt my stomach clench. What crashed through me like white-licked waves wasn’t jealousy, though there might have been some shade of that. Mostly what I felt was the stormy churning of my own desperate loneliness. I’d traveled so far, over hundreds of kilometers of cold, frozen ground. All on account of him, on account of the promise his body offered. My dreams had told me I wouldn’t be alone anymore, that I would be safe. My dreams told me that this strange boy could love me like I needed.
“Here,” he said, mistaking my silence for something else—a sullen protest maybe. He lifted a spindly arm, wrapping it around my shoulder and drawing me close. “I will show you.”
I pressed my head against his unbreathing chest. At first there was nothing, only the gray light all around us, the stars fading overhead, my breath. But then I felt his mind nudge mine open. I felt a jolt of heat, saw a vomitous flash of color. This should have been a perfect moment, as sweet as those high spring afternoons when the scent of clover was all around and Rachel had laced dandelion chains through my hair. It wasn’t. His mind was jumbled, as fractured as broken ice. I could see the fissure at the bottom of it, and it was shaped like a shadow of her—Velsa.
He wanted to tear his skin apart. This urge to join her, to end himself, wasn’t about me. It was a compulsion, like hunger or thirst, only worse. It formed the very core of his being. And if he dug deep enough, he’d finally uncover it.
Lousk.
I wanted to draw away, to fold my body in on itself and hold myself tight. But I couldn’t bring myself to move. After everything I’d been through, I was going to lose him. Like I’d once lost Momma. Like I’d lost Abba, too.
Abba. That’s when I realized that Vadix could see my thoughts and memories just as well as I could see his. He could hear the creaking in the rafters, the splintered rope groaning under the weight of my father’s body. He could see the stran
ge, distorted image of his face—like someone had taken out all the pins that held it together, that made my father vital and strong and real. If you’d asked Abba, he probably would have told you that he died years before, when his wife lay down with another man, and then was lost to him.
Without Alyana, he always said, way back in the days when my parents were young and we were happy, I’m nobody.
In a way Abba had been a lousk too.
Vadix fixed a narrow finger beneath my chin, angling my face up to meet his. “This pains you. This loss. Your father.”
“Of course it does,” I said, and sniffled. My face was suddenly covered in inexplicable tears. I hadn’t expected to cry tonight—but then, I hadn’t expected to find myself in his bed either. “Maybe it shouldn’t. He didn’t—he didn’t treat me well. Called me names. I think he was mad at Momma for leaving him and me and my brother. Or maybe he saw her in me, in the way I looked at boys and was always late to everything and always in my head. Maybe. I don’t know. I just know I needed him to be someone else, someone who could take care of me.”
“Maybe he wasn’t able to be anyone but himself for you,” Vadix said, his words plucked out carefully. I wondered if he was really talking about Abba at all. “Maybe he did try his best.”
“Maybe. It wasn’t enough.”
He set his head back on his pillow, staring up at the sky above. I watched him draw his tongue over his lips to wet them. When he spoke, his words were still tentative. Nervous. “I do feel a connection to you. Just as I once did with Velsa. The wild child, the animal girl of my dreams. I do not lie about this. One cannot deny one’s zeze. Now that I have met you, I wouldn’t be able to now even if I tried.”
I didn’t doubt it. Why else would he have welcomed me into his home, his bed—even the dark corners of his mind? But I wasn’t sure what to say, if there were any words that could make the situation between us better.
“I will do my best not to cause you harm,” he said at last, the words thudding resolutely onto the sheets beside us. “I do not wish to hurt you. I will see that your people are safe and well cared for before I—”
He broke off there, but he didn’t need to finish his sentence, not really. We both knew how this ended. I’d seen it before, with Abba—that stupid, hopeful look as he settled his life in his last days, arranging to have me married off. Abba had meant to see to it that I was safe, too. But safety was never what I wanted, not really.
What could I say? Vadix held me tight against his fragrant body, the strength of his grip undeniable. He’d said it himself. He didn’t want to hurt me. He was trying his best. Wasn’t that enough?
Of course it wasn’t, but it was no good telling him that. I buried my face in his cool flesh and murmured my consent. He drew me close. It wasn’t all of what I wanted; it wasn’t half of it. But in that long night, our first, it would have to do.
18
Day had already begun to blot out the stars, but the silver light of the Asherah still burned above. I kept my eye on her as I lay sleepless in his bed, my hands folded over my stomach. Even here I couldn’t escape her shadow. Up there, within her walls, I had killed a man, shaking clouded powder into dark wine. I had seen other deaths, too. Abba, his body a heavy weight that bowed the rafters. Mar Jacobi, his blood spilled out on the engine room floor. And Momma, years and years before. The first loss. Sometimes I felt as if everything else in my life spiraled out from that.
As I pulled myself from his bed, the cool morning air met my naked body. I tugged free the sheet, draping it over my shoulders. The fabric was soft, more luxurious than any I’d ever known on the ship. The smooth weave reminded me of his skin. I gazed wistfully at him, curled into a ball at the center of the mattress, his long body surprisingly small in the nest of blankets. Because I was awake, his dreams were long and black. Peaceful. So I let him sleep.
The night before, we’d hurried toward the bed in a fevered rush. I hadn’t had time to explore his home. Now I went from room to room feeling like an interloper in the small, private life he’d made. His accommodations were sparse. There was no art on the walls; the floors were bare, either white stone or white sand that had been packed flat and then smoothed down. But in truth the house needed no decoration. The light of the dawn poured through the decorative glass, dappling everything red and blue and green. Each room was curved—sloping walls, rounded counters, bubbled ceilings that showed daylight and trees and the city’s veil far beyond. I found what appeared to be a bathroom, a narrow slip of space at the center of the home covered in dark mosaic tiles. There was a waist-high bench with a narrow hole in the top that seemed untouched. Some sort of toilet or waste receptacle, I supposed. Meant for the original inhabitants, not a Xollu who subsisted on “sunbeams and vapors.” But I wasn’t like them; I hopped onto it, did my business.
Then I wandered out and toward the kitchen. It was a bright space, even in this early hour, with a glass ceiling overhead and a counter that shone with opalescent tile. But the plants that sat all around—in hanging baskets from the ceiling, in long planters along the floor—raised few complaints. They only turned over their leaves, exposing themselves to the sun. There was no icebox, no stove. But there was a shower stall in the corner, behind a door of frosted glass. I opened it, considering. A long spigot hung down with a green copper chain beside it. It had been days since I’d washed. Too many. I dropped the sheet down at the center of the floor and stepped inside, pulling the frosted glass door closed behind me.
I gave the chain a tentative pull. On the ship, pipes rattled and clanged, so caked with generations of lime that the pressure was never more than a splutter. But here the water was instant, the force strong. It didn’t taste mossy or stale like the ship’s water. In fact, it tasted like nothing at all as it rained down my face in rivers. I watched the dirt roll off me in sludgy streams and tried to count how long it had been since I’d last bathed. Five days, or six? I remembered scrubbing my skin with a honey wash on my wedding night, but it felt like a lifetime ago already, not the better portion of a single week.
As I scrubbed my hair, the scent of fire that had been trapped in my unwashed tresses blossomed, and then faded. When the water at long last washed clear, I stepped from the shower stall. Through the cloud of steam I ambled—until my hand bumped the counter, and found a pile of fresh cloth folded there. It was a bolt of silver fabric—one of Vadix’s robes, and a pair of matching trousers, too. I put them on. They were too big, billowing around my curves. But they were comfortable and clean, a world apart from the dirty cotton I’d left littering his bedroom floor.
You are awake.
Vadix’s voice in my mind startled me. I turned, glimpsing him in the doorway. He’d pulled on those loose green pants again. But as he strolled into the kitchen, I found myself frowning. Perhaps it was just the light—sparkling, gold and strong—but the skin over his flat belly looked different. It was darker now than it had been, nearly the color of the inside of a pomegranate. I watched him closely as he went to one of the two counter spigots and filled up a round glass bowl. No, it wasn’t the light. His arms and face were still the same mellow blue, but his belly and chest were now dark, an almost ruby red.
“What happened?” I asked. When he only stared back, I pointed at his midsection. He glanced down. His lips parted. He clicked laughter too.
“You happened,” he said. “I am no longer fallow.”
“Oh!” I replied. I felt my cheeks burn, suddenly furiously hot. He put down his cup and came to stand beside me.
“What’s this?” he asked, angling my face up to his. “Are you fertile now too?”
It was all so ridiculous. This conversation, this morning. I wrinkled my nose at him.
“No, no,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m only blushing. Thank you for the clothes.”
I pulled away, doing a quick spin across his kitchen floor. Silver fabric rippled after me. He watched, smiling.
“You look less like an animal than bef
ore.”
“Is that meant to be a compliment?”
“It’s meant to be—”
A high-pitched chirrup interrupted Vadix’s words. He tilted his head to the side, glimpsing a panel set into the far wall that had just gone light.
“Excusing me,” he said, holding up one long finger. As he strolled across the floor, I leaned my weight against the countertop. His hands made quick work across the screen. Meanwhile I picked up his bowl. It didn’t look like ordinary water. The bottom was slicked with oil, shining greasy golden.
“Taot?” he demanded. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the face of an Ahadizhi woman. She let out a loose stream of words.
“Zeza dhosoou zozax aum dhesedi deosoaz. Zhieserak dosoe! Dosoe terix zhieserak, zozax thosouu—”
“Arum azax aum dasa dhosoou rausiz zeza?”
As they spoke, their voices hit strange, passionate heights. I leaned against the counter, peering past Vadix’s naked shoulders and toward the screen. A pair of Xollu could be seen in the background, stern-eyed and serious. I wondered what had happened that had so offended them. Maybe it was because of me and my flight through the city after Vadix. In my rashness I could have spread disease or discord through Raza Ait. We were meant to stay safe and secure in our quarantine camp, instead of rushing out to mingle with the city’s inhabitants. I swallowed hard, gazing down into the bowl. My throat was suddenly dry, tight. I pointed one pinkie finger and dipped it into the bowl, then plunged it into my mouth. Whatever it was that Vadix had been drinking, it was terribly sour, with a sweetness that I couldn’t taste until after I swallowed.
“Terra!”
Before I knew it, the screen was off and Vadix stood beside me again. Stern-eyed, he plucked the bowl from out my hands and placed it on the counter.