Idol of Bone

by Jane Kindred

  As Ahr clutched the damp cloth between her fingers, Shiva stretched her arm across the table and covered the ring she wore. “You are the mother of RaNa of Rhyman. That is her band.”

  Ahr corrected her bitterly. “I am the mother of Mila, whom the templar priests took from me. I know nothing of RaNa.”

  “And yet you have not come to ask after Mila, though you killed her yourself.” Ahr wanted to deny it, but the Meer regarded her through eyes as green as poison. “RaNa is naught but a stranger to you, one more parasite pulled from the throat of the strangling Delta. Because you choose to believe your Mila died the day she was taken from you does not make it so.” Her hand gripped Ahr’s painfully, grinding the ring against Ahr’s knuckle. “You will not ask after RaNa-Mila, but I will tell you of her. She grew up empty and longed for her mother. She was taken from your breast the way all Meer are taken from those who give them life, placed in a house of the dead to do the bidding of the selfish Deltans and their templars.

  “You hated RaNa because she wore gold in her hair and rode in litters of velvet and silk, receiving the gifts of the underclass though they could barely feed their own children. Are you so stupid, young Ahr? Did you not guess it was the merchants and the keepers of the Meer who stole from you? You broke the skull of little Mila, who came from your own flesh and breathed of your own lungs, and whose heart beat with your own blood, while the templars have always had the wealth of the Delta in their coffers, and have it still. Have you no shame?”

  Ahr kept her hands still and her eyes steady throughout this rebuke. “I have nothing but shame, MeerShiva. It’s why I’ve come.”

  Shiva sat back, and her face seemed to change, subtly transforming to a more youthful appearance. When the lamplight flickered, Ahr could see the dusty hair was a dark and glistening rubine, without a trace of gray.

  Shiva looked into her eyes. “Perhaps shame is the wrong emotion, girl. Perhaps it is remorse that is necessary.” The Meer rubbed her hands together in the cold, closing her eyes a moment and then opening them shrewdly. “You think a cock will make you a better person?”

  A shiver ran up Ahr’s spine as she realized the Meer had reached into her thoughts. She blushed but held her ground. “A cock would make me less conspicuous, MeerShiva. You ought to understand that.”

  The Meer inclined her head.

  Ahr spoke again, trying to keep her eyes on the shifting face. She had the feeling Shiva was trying to manipulate her in some way, to mesmerize her. “I don’t wish to be…the mother of anything.”

  Shiva stared at her for an interminable time, neither blinking, nor twitching, nor, it seemed to Ahr, inhaling a breath. Then the Meer stood and reached toward her with both arms, and Ahr flinched. The space between them, occupied by the coal-bin table, dissolved at Shiva’s motion. At her touch, Ahr was caught like a fly in a web and taken in, absorbed into the expanding core of the powerful body.

  She tried to cry out, but her mouth seemed full of something, and she was surrounded, enveloped in amorphous tissue that was continually shifting. Despite the muffling of her voice, she felt a terrible howl emerging from a place deeper than sound, prodded outward by the impetus of pain. She couldn’t struggle, could only submit to the agonizing sensation of being crushed and engulfed.

  The red of blood and a pounding beat surrounded her, a bitter fluid with the tang of metal pouring through her lungs instead of air. The howl went on, torn from her cells, and molten tissue seemed to weep from her eyes. The beat confined and comforted her, though it was terrible, and soon her incorporeal cry was a thread in its dominant meter, impelled first into a rhythmic thing like desperate song, and then into the voice of her own Mila, tender and plaintive and torn from her. The cry became weaker and faded, like Mila taken from her into the darkness. Sound was no longer conceivable. Breathing no longer seemed to be a function of her own body but of fluid, softly and unconsciously taken and exchanged between her cells and the surrounding matter.

  In this stillness, Ahr felt herself falling, not downward but away. Then Shiva stood before her, solid again. A remnant of the frightened howl escaped, and she did fall at last, moaning, to the cellar floor. Her clothes were scattered over her, and when she moved, there was an unbearable ache and unfamiliarity in her limbs.

  “What have you done?” The whisper was her own voice but changed. Ahr was no longer a woman.

  “They will not know you anymore in Rhyman,” said Shiva. “You are still yourself, still Ahr, but you are no longer subject to the caste of the veil.”

  Ahr sat up, his head feeling dim and his muscles a knot of pain. Instinctively, he pulled the garments up to cover himself, but instead of breasts, he encountered the smooth void of his altered chest. He looked to Shiva, and his mouth opened to speak, but a quicker reflex had taken over, and he saw that Shiva was changed as well, or he understood her differently, in a basic way with the body and not the complex invention of the mind. Shiva’s skin was suddenly important to him, as were the oils that sparkled on it. He couldn’t think why he hadn’t smelled her subtle musk before, or noticed the heady green of her eyes.

  “You will be solitary,” said Shiva. “No man can have companions who has not volleyed with them as a boy. Nor will you find women easy to take to your bed.”

  He felt his brow go white with annoyance, an easier emotion than discomfiture. “And why should women be so elusive to me?”

  “Your confidence in who you are is no greater now than when you were one of them. Do you see yourself taking them as Ra took you?”

  Now he was blushing. He didn’t care for the picture of his girlish deflowering that had entered his head as though it were common knowledge among the Meer.

  Shiva smiled and went down to his level, balancing on her heels. If he wasn’t mistaken, she’d become younger still. “You may find you still desire men. It makes no difference. The desires of some are changeable, of others, not.”

  There was a throbbing beat in his head obscuring thought and making Shiva’s words a jumble of half-heard, soothing sounds. He turned aside and staggered to his hands and knees, attempting to stand, though he ached so that the feat seemed impossible. Shiva’s hands were on him, pressing him down. He fumbled and fell onto his back, and she climbed over him like a spider, intent and stern, throwing aside his dress and exposing him.

  “It will be a long spell before you have relief in the temple of another body.”

  “No.” He shook his head, but Shiva gripped his strong jaw between her even stronger fingers.

  “You do not understand me, ordinary man. Did you think there would be no price for what I have given?” Her voice dropped to a hiss. “The Meer have fasted longer than you can fathom. Deprivation of the flesh has taken its toll in the erosion of our wisdom, our common sense and our instinct for self-preservation. It has laid us bare to the bludgeoning of templar deceit.” Shiva placed her hands around his cock, and it rose beneath her touch.

  Ahr felt a sense of panic at the insistent ache that had arisen with it. It made him wish to be devoured, annihilated, to do whatever Shiva bid him. He was helpless and, for the moment, glad of it.

  Shiva yanked him toward her. “You have not the patience of the Meer.” She descended on him with such swiftness that the stroke of her body was like fire. He was deep within her, and she was mounted on him like a predator, lifting and plunging her thighs with brutal efficiency and a roughness that made him expect to see blood. Ahr couldn’t move, would not have been able even if his limbs had allowed it. This was terrible and divine, and he found himself groaning with each thrust of her flesh.

  Her cloak fell open, and he shuddered as she arched back and let it fall, breasts glistening with sweat as she bounced against him. Ahr grasped at the air as though he would hold her, and she gave a shriek like the sound of a mating cat that made him fall back. She was a thing beyond beauty, beyond bliss. He felt the spasm begin at the base
of his shaft, and he shouted something he couldn’t later remember as the heat in his loins began to spill into her.

  Her pounding of him ceased. “Keep your seed,” she said disdainfully. “I have no need of it.” The power of her body convulsed against him, and she had somehow expelled what he’d given her. She stood, and he was torn out of her, lying depleted in a puddle of his own humiliation. He closed his eyes, as much from exhaustion as from a dread of looking at her.

  “Three hundred years for a minute,” he heard her say, but he was drifting too far away to wonder what this meant.

  When Ahr awoke, the sky was dusky in the window wells above Shiva’s cellar, but not with morning. He sat up with a start to find himself clothed in a bright drape of red—a man’s garment stitched with embroidered plackets and gathers between the legs. Shiva had somehow put him into a high cot, and he climbed down, finding himself no longer sore, but moving awkwardly as he adjusted to the change in musculature.

  She was waiting, Shiva the elder coal woman with blackened hands and besmirched complexion, resembling only faintly the creature who’d consumed him.

  “How long have I slept?” Before Shiva answered, the length of the hair on his face hinted at the astonishing reply as he rubbed his jaw between his thumb and fingers.

  “A month. One turn of the moon of which you are no longer part. One turn of the cycle you shall no longer have.”

  Shiva had granted Ahr’s vetma, freeing Ahr forever from the caste of the veil. But it hadn’t freed Ahr of shame after all, or of the words MeerShiva had spoken when they parted, as though no time had passed at all since their first conversation. “You will not ask after RaNa-Mila, but I will tell you of her. She will not return. Her heart was broken. It is the heart that returns, again and again, to life.”

  Remorse had followed him every day since.

  In the years before the Expurgation, Ahr had created a pampered goddess in her mind to keep RaNa from being real, to keep from dying of a broken heart herself—to keep RaNa from being Mila. She had pictured the shallow, vain RaNa as a possession of Ra’s, something he coddled and flaunted as a reflection of himself, a smug sign of his virility in a time when Meer had long been thought impotent. A spoiled being such as she’d imagined could not possibly be loved, and the cold, heartless creature she knew MeerRa to be could not possibly love. They were perfect for each other, and she despised them.

  But in Ra’s face tonight, Ahr had seen—impossibly—the reflection of his own love for his lost Mila. Ra had loved their child.

  As his head tried to make sense of these contradictions, his stomach churned, taking his mind off his less physical misery. The conjured food he’d eaten out of spite hadn’t agreed with him. The thought of being trapped in here with the smell of being sick was almost enough to make him lose the meal. If he was going to be ill, he was going to have to find a way to do it outside.

  When he rose unsteadily from his place before the fire and tried to get to the door, Jak jumped up and blocked his way. “What in the world do you think you’re going to do? You can’t be thinking of going after her!”

  “I’m not going after her. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going—” He paused, holding back his gorge. “I’m going to be sick.” He tried to push Jak out of the way, but his friend could be solid and stubborn as a tree stump when it suited. “Please. I don’t want to be sick inside.” He covered his mouth. It was too late.

  Jak propelled him swiftly to the ceramic basin, and Ahr clung to the edge of it, retching from the pit of his belly. “You have running water, you idiot.” Jak pulled back his hair, the gentle touch in contrast to the words, while he was violently ill.

  When he was empty, Jak stroked his hair, tucking it behind his ear, and helped him wash up, operating the hand pump for him to rinse everything away. If only the rest were so easy to get rid of.

  He grabbed the edge of the basin once more, overwhelmed with self-hatred beneath Jak’s kindness. There had been another time when Ahr had been similarly comforted by a friend, equally undeserving of either comfort or friendship. He shook the thought away and stared into the empty basin. “You must think little of me now.”

  “No, Ahr.” Jak put a hand on his shoulder. “Come sit down.” He let Jak lead him once more to the fire. It hardly mattered. He couldn’t feel the cold. He was numb.

  Jak tucked the blanket around him as they sat. Every act of kindness made him loathe himself more. Jak didn’t understand. He didn’t deserve kindness. Or maybe it was pity. He didn’t deserve that either. He was despicable.

  He wrapped his arms around his knees. “I don’t expect you to understand what happened between Ra and me.” He shuddered as Jak touched his hand.

  “No, but I understand that you’ve lost a child.”

  “Lost?” He pulled away from the touch, horrified at Jak’s sympathy. “I killed her! I killed my child!” He closed his eyes, covering his head with his arms as if he could keep Jak at bay—keep the truth at bay. Like Ra, he didn’t want to remember. How lucky she’d been to come back with an empty mind! How lovely it would be to know nothing of himself, nothing of what he’d done. He hated her for that. Something new he could hate her for. It felt good, if only for a moment before he went back to hating himself.

  Ahr shook his head beneath his arms. “I’ve longed for Ra to be the guilty one, but it has always been me.” He curled into a fetal position and lay with his back to the fire. “You wondered why I was so closed about my past. Now you know. I murdered my own child.” He waited for Jak to move away from him, to rebuke him, to reject him once and for all.

  To his surprise, Jak curled up before him instead and slipped a hand through his, looking him in the eye. “My dear friend. I don’t pretend to understand how you could have been a mother, or a virgin girl seduced. Perhaps I’ll ask you for your secret someday, in the interest of gender philosophy.” Jak gave him a wry smile. “But I know one thing about you. You could no more murder a child than you could conjure this fire.”

  “No. I was part of the Expurgation. I was there. I stood on the steps and watched as they were—” He made a strangled noise in his throat, his breath a wheezing gasp, unable to continue.

  “That doesn’t make you a murderer. You didn’t strike the blows. I heard what you said to Ra. You didn’t even know they meant to hurt her.” Ahr tried to turn his face away, choking on tears, but Jak prevented him. “Look at me. You didn’t. You know that. You’re a kind and decent person.”

  He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling with a laugh, but it was difficult to mock himself with tears spilling over his cheeks.

  “And Ahr, my friend, despite your gender or mine, or any lack thereof—” Jak smoothed a thumb over his wet cheek—“I love you. And I can’t bear to see you cry.”

  With a painful gasp, he pulled Jak against his body, warm and real beneath the layers of wool, and shuddered with silent tears. This was not what he’d expected. This wasn’t the deserved contempt he’d rehearsed in his head when he’d thought of telling Jak about himself. He buried his face against the strong shoulder while the fire heated them, the comforting embrace distracting him from his sorrow.

  Though the awful truth was still there, the burden of dread he’d carried for so many years at the prospect of being exposed was lifted. He’d never shared himself with anyone. Even Ra hadn’t truly known Ahr. MeerRa had been consumed with her, driven only by his insatiable Meeric desire, but just as the Meer had never gone beyond her veil, he’d never seen inside Ahr to who she was. And now, Jak knew Ahr and loved him anyway.

  Jak kissed his temple, stroking his hair as his shuddering slowly subsided, and he began to feel a heat that had nothing to do with the fire. He was appalled at himself for feeling desire. Certainly Jak would be equally appalled if he expressed it. But Jak’s hand was strong and gently possessive as it moved from his ear and trailed down the side of his neck. It was an unmistaka
bly sensuous gesture, and Jak couldn’t possibly be unaware of its effect on him.

  He raised his head and dared to kiss the hollow of Jak’s neck, touching his lips lightly to the smooth skin. Jak made a soft sound, a sigh of breath that said he wasn’t mistaken in his assumption.

  When he met no resistance to this tentative exploration, he traveled upward with his mouth, absorbing Jak’s taste and scent, caressing the softly defined jaw, almost forgetting everything in the delight of at last being so close to Jak, so intimate. But his mounting appetite was thwarted as Jak pressed a hand to his lips before their mouths came together. He paused, confused, afraid he’d misread the signals after all, but the steel eyes were warm with arousal.

  “Ahr.” The word was a bare whisper as the slender fingers traced along his lips. “Don’t make the mistake of assuming I’m only the sum of my parts.”

  “Never, Jak.” He dipped again toward the elusive lips, and this time was rewarded with their embrace. As he explored the texture of a mouth that wasn’t his own, he moved his hands beneath the warm shirt at Jak’s waist, palms and fingertips permitted for a moment to mold the smooth terrain of skin until he made the mistake of slipping them through the laces of the canvas pants.

  Jak shoved him away. “Dammit, Ahr. Don’t. Is that all you can think of—what’s inside my pants? Is that all that defines you?”

  Ahr rolled onto his back, one hand clutched in his hair in frustration. “Of course not. Fuck. Yes! I don’t know.” An image of himself lying beneath MeerShiva on the floor of her den flashed into his head, at her mercy as she exacted her price for the vetma she’d given. She hadn’t asked for his consent, but his newly male body had been alarmingly willing. The first and last time he’d had sex as a man.

  That wasn’t helping. Groaning, he rolled away onto his side, hoping Jak couldn’t see the heat in his face, or indeed, the heat in his cock. He stretched his hand behind him and Jak took it, entwining their fingers together.