He looked more closely at her. “Were you worried you’d frighten me?”
She laughed out loud. “I hoped I would.”
He stared at her. In spite of her captivating beauty, something about her didn’t sit right with him. There was something wrong with her. A subtle hint of corruption bled through her beautiful exterior. Something rotten and degenerate made his skin crawl. A moment later, her smile banished his doubts, and he let himself inch closer to her.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
She cocked her head to one side and smiled again. “My name is Sooss, and you are Ari. Everyone knows that.”
He let that pass. “Sooss. That’s a strange name.”
She shrugged. “It’s a standard Aqinas name. We all have little, short names.”
“Frieda doesn’t,” he pointed out.
“She’s human,” Sooss replied. “She had that name before she came here. Sasha has a longer name, and so do Karina and Vera.”
“Who are they?” he asked.
“They’re other human women who made their homes here,” she replied.
“I heard about Frieda, and one other,” he murmured. “I didn’t know there were others.”
“How did you know about them?” she asked.
“My mother told me about them,” he replied. “She knew about them from....from before.”
Sooss nodded. “You mean she knew them before the peace agreement. The others came here from different factions after your parents made the peace agreement. Vera came from the Felsite, and Karina came from the Ursidreans.”
“What about Sasha?” he asked.
Sooss shrugged. “Sasha wasn’t with any faction before she came.”
“What do you mean?” Ari asked. “Was she with the Outliers?”
“No,” Sooss replied. “She wasn’t with anybody. She just came. I can’t describe it any better than that, since I wasn’t born then. I only know she came from....somewhere.”
Ari waved his hand. “Never mind. Tell me more about you. Where’s this village you come from?”
She pointed through the trees. “It’s right over there.”
Ari frowned. “I’ve been over there enough times to know there’s nothing there.”
She only smiled. “It’s there. You must not be ready to go there, if you didn’t find it.”
Ari smacked his lips. “If it’s there, I want to see it.”
“You’ll see it,” she replied. “Don’t worry about that.”
“Frieda didn’t tell me about any village,” Ari grumbled.
“She had enough to tell you without telling you that,” Sooss returned. “You wouldn’t have believed her anyway. You didn’t believe the things she did tell you, did you?”
Ari’s head shot up. “How do you know what she said to me?”
“The water connects all our thoughts and feelings and sensations,” Sooss replied. “She explained all this to you.”
“So you can read each other’s minds? Is that it?” he asked. “Is that what this connection does for you?”
“It does it for you, too,” Sooss told him. “If you try, you can know what everyone else in this world thinks and feels and senses.”
“That’s what Frieda said,” he replied, “but it hasn’t worked for me yet.”
“Would you like to try with me?” she asked.
His head whipped around, and his mouth fell open. “With you?”
“Sure,” she replied. “Try to know what I’m thinking right now.”
He shut his mouth. Then he opened it, but he shut it again without saying anything. Sooss laughed out loud at him until he dropped his eyes. “I wasn’t thinking anything about that.”
He tried to turn his back on her. “I don’t have to know what you’re thinking. You already know what I’m thinking.”
“You should believe what Frieda told you,” she went on. “She has no reason to lie to you.”
“I don’t want to talk about Frieda anymore,” he muttered. “The water gives you a connection with her to eavesdrop on our conversation.”
“The water gives me a connection with her,” Sooss replied, “but I have a connection with her anyway because she’s my mother.”
Ari blinked. “Frieda is your mother?”
Sooss nodded.
“Then you’re half human,” he exclaimed.
“That’s right,” she replied.
He almost burst out laughing. “I’m half human, too.”
She touched his hand. “I know.”
At that moment, a torrent of images and sounds and emotions flooded through her fingertips into his mind. He staggered back, away from her touch. His mouth gaped open, but no sound came out. He couldn’t formulate these thoughts into any coherent understanding of anything. People drifted across his field of vision, voices thundered in his ear, and a thousand impressions stabbed his heart.
Unstoppable grief, murderous rage, and inexpressible joy fought for control of his mind. He slammed his fists into his temples again and again to drive these foreign influences out of his mind, but it didn’t work. Mixed in amongst the quarreling emotions, an endless love for everyone brought tears to his eyes and a lump to his throat.
He stared at Sooss through the sea of tumultuous memories. He knew now he was witnessing the memories and thoughts and emotions of thousands of people, all jumbled together so he couldn’t distinguish who they belonged to. He saw Sooss, and her parents, and her younger sisters, and all the Aqinas through centuries of life under the sea. He saw his own faction, and the Ursidrean boys and Reina walking over the countryside with Aeifa and his cousins. They thought he was dead. Aeifa broke down and wept in Taman’s arms when she thought Roshin had murdered her brother. She would never know he was still alive in Aqinas territory.
He tried to call out to Aeifa, to tell her he was still alive, but nothing but a broken scream tore out of his mouth. Sooss hovered in front of him, beyond the flickering images. She tried to hold his hands to stop him from punching himself in the head, but he barely registered her presence. He screamed and screamed until he was hoarse.
“Ari!” she called. “Ari!”
He struggled against her hands until he collapsed at her feet in a swoon.
Chapter 3
He woke up alone in the same place he’d fallen asleep the night before, but today, unlike all the other days, he woke up refreshed and contented. He didn’t have to search the surrounding countryside for anything. Somehow, Frieda’s and Sooss’s words sank into his mind.
There were other people here. He might not be able to see them, but he could communicate with them, just as soon as he figured out how to use this seamless fluid connection they told him about. Then he would understand everything. He wouldn’t be alone anymore.
He wasn’t alone now. He had Sooss. He couldn’t go to the Aqinas village, so she came to him. They weren’t hiding from him. She wanted to talk to him, and she’d come to him to do it. The thought cheered him up no end. He set off running through the forest, not in search of anything, but out of pure contented happiness. He was home. He might not be in Honor’s Mansion, but the water gave him the closest thing he would ever have to a home. He could almost imagine he was in his own territory, running for the joy of it, on his way back to his own village.
He ran around a clump of trees where the sun shone down to the forest floor—and stopped. There stood Frieda in her white gown, forever impassive. She smiled at him, and he recognized now the resemblance between her and Sooss. It wasn’t the same welcoming smile she’d given him at their first meeting, but it still warmed his heart.
He walked right up to her. “You’re up early this morning.”
“I should say the same thing about you,” she countered. “You seem to be feeling better.”
“I am,” he replied. “I’m very happy.”
“Because Sooss came to visit you last night,” she added.
He squared his shoulders. �
�I know what you’re thinking, and I can assure you, I would never....”
Frieda held up her hand. “Don’t assure me of anything. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
Ari gasped. “I mean it. I would never violate the Aqinas’s hospitality by overstepping Sooss’s welcome—or yours. Believe me, Sooss is perfectly safe visiting me in the middle of the night.”
Frieda smiled. “Whatever Sooss decides to do is up to her. She’s fully mature. If she wants to visit you in the middle of the night, it’s none of my business.”
Ari couldn’t help but smile his old wicked smile. “But it is your business. You’re her mother, and you can read her thoughts—and mine. If we do anything—not that we will do anything, mind you—but if we did, you would know about it. Then what will happen to me?”
“Nothing will happen to you,” she replied. “You’ll be just as welcome here if you do anything with Sooss as if you do nothing. She’s old enough to make her own decisions, and if she wants you, I have nothing to say about it. I’m her mother, but I can only stand aside and watch her live her own life. I would never interfere.”
Ari moved closer to her. “You have nothing to worry about, because there’s nothing going on between me and Sooss. She visited me last night because she wanted to talk to me, and she did. That’s all. Nothing happened.”
Frieda peered into his eyes. “But something did happen, didn’t it?”
Ari looked down at the ground. “I guess it did.”
“It will get easier,” Frieda murmured. “It takes practice.”
“Was it like that for you, too?” he asked.
“No. I mean yes.” Frieda closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t explain it.”
“Try,” Ari urged.
Frieda sighed. “When I met the man I mated with—Sooss’s father—I experienced a moment of connection with him. I saw this world through his eyes. I didn’t experience a flood of connections like you did. You connected with all Aqinas, everywhere, at all times, all at the same time. You connected with the collective memories and thoughts of everyone in this world. That must have been devastating.”
Ari sniffed. He couldn’t look at her.
She touched his hand the way Sooss did, but it didn’t have the same effect. “You’ll learn to connect with the Aqinas one at a time and under your own control. Sooss can help you with that.”
Ari stole a glance at Frieda. “What’s wrong with her?”
Frieda’s head snapped up. “What?”
“There’s something wrong with her,” he replied. “What is it?”
She turned away from him. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answer to.”
He grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. “You’ve told me a lot of things I didn’t want to hear. You’ve destroyed my world with answers to questions I never asked, but you can’t tell me there isn’t something wrong with that girl. Anyone can see it.”
Frieda’s face went hard and cold before his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me, Ari? What’s wrong with her?”
He smacked his lips. “Do you think I’m so stupid I can’t see what’s right in front of my eyes? She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. She’s ten times more beautiful than any Lycaon girl I ever met, but there’s something wrong with her. There’s something evil and twisted and disgusting lurking just beneath the surface of all that beauty. What is it? Is she crazy? Is she dangerous? I’m not leaving here until you tell me the truth.”
Frieda jerked her arm out of his grasp and whirled away. She strode away into the trees, but just as Ari was making up his mind to go after her, she stopped. She stood with her back to him and gazed off into the forest.
On silent feet, Ari walked up behind her and waited. Frieda didn’t turn around. She spoke in a grating voice that cut through the peaceful stillness with razor precision. “She’s dying.”
A chill ran up Ari’s spine, but he didn’t move or make a sound. So that was it. Some disease threatened Sooss and marred her otherwise perfect beauty, her otherwise perfect kindness and acceptance. Her smile flashed through Ari’s mind. Through the tempestuous soup of thoughts and memories, he understood her better now than he could have hoped to do with a thousand lifetimes as her lover. She would live out her young life and leave this world too soon. That’s why she smiled on him with such wisdom and compassion.
Frieda rounded on him. “Whatever you do, don’t you dare condescend to pity her. She’s the strongest Aqinas in this territory, and she’s chosen to help you. Respect that, or you’ll answer to me. Do you hear me?”
Ari stared into her flashing eyes and nodded. How could this woman, who’d lost everything by being abducted from her home world and transported thousands of light years across the galaxy, how could she lose the sisters and her cousin she still had left by coming to live under the ocean? How could a woman like that stand by and watch her own child, her oldest daughter, wither and die before her eyes? Ari knew Sooss a single night, perhaps less than an hour, and already the thought of losing her, her precious smile, her loving eyes and the warmth of her care, was more than he could bear.
Frieda turned away from him again, and this time, he didn’t try to stop her. She’d been through it all. She’d already confronted the anguish. Now it was his turn.
The swirling mass of information still ran through his mind. He tried to filter out something meaningful about Frieda and Sooss, or any other Aqinas, but it was all still so fresh. It made no sense to him. When he looked up again, Frieda was gone. He turned to go back, and for the first time, he found himself in a part of the forest he didn’t recognize. This was definitely not Honor’s Mansion.
He studied the foliage around him. The moss on the ground had a purple tint to it. The closer he looked, the more he noticed different plants growing on the ground under his feet. They didn’t look like the plants at home, either. They looked like…..¸.well, they looked like the bunches of water weed growing near the swimming hole.
Now when he surveyed his surroundings, the veneer of familiarity wore thin. It looked like the underside of the river. He was underwater. The illusion of Honor’s Mansion faded and left reality in its place
Chapter 4
Ari leaned over the pool in his favorite clearing and touched his finger to the water. He watched the little creatures squirming in the depths, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't bring his mind to accept there was no liquid surface separating him from them. He couldn't accept the water surrounded him on all sides. For all he knew, these creatures swam and fornicated and lived their whole lives all around him, all the time, and only the water's insidious influence continued to convince him they existed only at the bottom of the pool.
All of a sudden, he plunged his hand into the pool and snatched at the little things with all his strength. The water splashed into his face and blinded him. He pulled his hand out of the water to wipe his eyes and rubbed mud in them instead. He cursed and growled and stumbled back away from the pool.
Tinkling laughter startled him, and his eyes popped open. He blinked the mud out of his eyes and found Sooss standing on the other side of the pool. When she saw his expression, she tried to stifle her laughter, but only half-heartedly. Then she stopped trying and laughed out loud.
Ari frowned. "What's so funny?"
"You," she snickered. "You tried to catch those worms in the bottom of the pool, and now look at you."
He glared at her. "You don't have to laugh at me for it."
She bit her lip. "I can't help it."
He wiped his forearm across his eyes and shook the mud and water off his fur. "What are you doing here, anyway?"
"I wanted to see you," she replied.
"Again?" He asked. "What for?"
"I like talking to you," she replied. "I thought you liked talking to me, too."
He kicked at a clump of moss on the ground. "What's the point of all this talking?"
"You came here to find us," she told him. "Now here I am, so you might as well talk to me."
"I didn't come here to talk to you," he shot back.
The smile vanished from her pretty little mouth. "Then why did you come here?"
He threw out his arms and spun away. "How the deuce should I know? I don't want to be here. All I want to do is go back to the land with my sister and my cousins. Is that too much to ask?"
"If you want to go back," she returned, "go right ahead. No one's stopping you. Go on. The exit is right over there. Just walk over there and leave. No one here will cry over you, least of all me."
His head whipped around and he stared at her. His mouth opened. Then he shut it. "That's not what I meant."
"Of course it is," she snapped. "I came here to talk to you, but you would rather go back to the land. So go. I don't care."
"What's the point of talking to you?" he bellowed. "You can't give me what I need. You're not even...." He trailed off.
Sooss narrowed her eyes at him. "Oh, I understand now. You found out about me. That's it, isn't it? That's why you think there's no point in talking to me."
He muttered under his breath. "I didn't say that."
"But you meant it," she replied, "so you might as well come right out and say it. You found out I'm sick, and now you think talking to me is a waste of time."
He kicked the moss again, but his cheeks burned. He hated himself.
"What did she tell you?" Sooss asked.
"Nothing," Ari murmured. "She didn't tell me anything. Forget all about it, and forget about me."
In a flash, she flew at him. Her strength and her passion startled him out of a hypnotic trance. He barely got his hands up in time to block her from pummeling him with her fists and kicking him with her sharp, bare toes. She landed a few well-placed kicks against his knees and punches at his face. He would have run away if he had thought of it soon enough. "Hey!"
"How dare you?" She shrieked. "How dare you condescend to talk to me that way? You idiot! You dolt! Do you think you can get rid of me like that? Do you think I'm some piece of wood you can kick away whenever you don't want me around anymore?"
The New Angondra Complete Series Page 22