Switch

by Trevor Leyenhorst

whispered secrets of the ancient world to his heart. ‘One one, two one, two two, three two.’ Her count continued while Aron walked out of the hut and into the sun; he had heard soft steps on the sand of the track and had gone to investigate. Vesta let her hand fall to catch Ravno’s first arm and slid her hand to his wrist to pull it toward her.

  ‘I’m… Not sure if my pulse is quite regular right at the moment,’ he said.

  She acknowledged him by an upward twitch at the corners of her mouth and continued her primeval mutterings, ‘three three, four three,’ and planted two fingers on his skin while she supported his wrist underneath. She brought his arm to his side when she completed the count of his breath and blood flow.

  ‘Where do you swim in the mornings?’ she asked him.

  ‘Usually the east beaches, by Latomas.’

  ‘And you live in Phoyara?’

  ‘No, I live in Mara, but I work the Vorra garden and bring vegetables to the city,’ he said, ‘if people need more than what they’re already growing in the packs. We could bring you some here too, if you like.’

  Vesta gleamed at her patient. ‘Oh we have plenty here, and we get more from the gardens at Notou. I thank you for your generosity.’

  She walked over to a row of shelves in a dark portion of the hut and picked up a hemp cuff and a deep-red, wooden dowel made from polished arbutus branch. Ravno glanced around to see Aron’s silhouette talking to a woman outside the entrance.

  Vesta returned with her tools. ‘Ravno, take off your skirt and lie here, if you don’t mind.’ Her hand motioned over the solid, dirt platform. Once on his back, she deftly placed her strong hand inside his thigh and read his femoral pulse on both sides. She lifted his first leg, which held the stronger of his two pulses, and wrapped the cuff where the thick muscles thinned, near the top. She let the leg rest. Then Vesta looped the dowel inside the material and wound it with one hand, tightening the hemp cuff, while she kept the other hand on his skin just below the binding. Ravno concentrated on the frond thatches above and looked through the central porthole in the ceiling at the frilly clouds breezing across a deepening cerulean sky. He reasoned that it must be getting on in the day and wondered where Aron lived.

  Vesta stopped winding and held her hand against his thigh. As she slowly unwound, she murmured to herself like a hummingbird in the trees.

  ‘Thank you Ravno, now please run around the oval, slowly for two laps and quickly for one or two. Then return here.’ She left the cuff and dowel on the platform so he understood she meant to re-read everything after he ran. He met Aron and the woman outside.

  ‘I’m going for a quick run around, Aron, I’ll be back.’

  Aron looked from him to the woman and told her, ‘Then I guess it’s your turn to see Vesta.’

  He broke into a trot after Ravno. ‘Wait-up. I may as well come with you.’

  They didn’t speak for the first lap, as they ran and took in their surroundings. Aron, still in his capa and skirt, remembered his days of keeping the grounds. Ravno, in just his cloth, tried to keep a steady, slower pace and thought of when he might switch with someone next. He couldn’t seem to switch with Aron and he frightened to think of switching with the Ishi, with her lashes and bold face and piercing sight. It would be too intense.

  Ravno and Aron rounded the hut for a second time, passing by the Ishi and the other woman who talked by the entrance. The woman wore a string of kukui nuts around her neck and touched them from time to time, though her first hand still held Vesta’s hand from their greeting.

  ‘Okay Aron, I’m going to pick up the pace. You do what you want.’ Ravno pulled ahead to start a few quicker laps.

  ‘Don’t wait for me. Next lap I’ll wait for you to come around—if you can catch me!’ Though short of breath he laughed fully, and watched Ravno pass the hot pool, the beams, and round the mats. Then Ravno disappeared behind the hut and Aron knew he’d have to push to keep ahead, once Ravno got around.

  Ravno focused. He found the groove of his soles as they hit the track and felt his toes flick sand against his calves. His arms moved freely without his violet capa. As he passed the hut a third time he picked the other woman as his next host. It would be obvious to him; he’d be able to see Vesta right there in front of him, or her, rather, and he’d just continue to run around and maybe faint—but more from Vesta’s warmth. He decided to wait until he was behind the hut in case he got a face full of sand. He ran harder, without realizing, as he thought about the woman and the Ishi, about the hut and the entrance, and about the kukui nuts and Vesta’s radiant eyes. His naked feet pattered the weathered sand. His hair didn’t move much, and neither did his eyes. He stared straight ahead and expected to see Vesta in front of him at any moment, the Ishi in all her sublimity. His breath almost drowned out the noise of his feet that pounded the track and created distinct depressions. He didn’t notice Aron running his heart out near the hut.

  And then it happened. The cold pinch at the top of his spine. His brow scrunched as thought slowly turned to icy command. Ecstatic, he felt the symbiosis between her body and his. He could see through her field of vision but control his own body. He kept running, as if his bones knew what to do on their own, and he kept seeing through her eyes.

  But it wasn’t her eyes…. How could he explain the black vignette around the scene at the Ishi’s hut? Why could he see both women?

  He began to lose it. Time lost all sense. The particles of sand at his feet each had a choice of where they wanted to land. Should they hit his calf first then ricochet out? Perhaps they’d rocket up and drift down, lulling the air around them to a gentle state of remaining as it was. As it was, Ravno had switched with Aron. Aron had been looking at the women at the entrance of the hut—Jasmin and Vesta, the kukuis around Jasmin’s neck, their hands in an almost liquid embrace that became borderless.

  Ravno forgot to lift his foot high enough to make the next stride. His toes caught a small rise in the track and his knee buckled upward, throwing his balance past the edge of recovery. The scene by the hut vanished through the black frames and he saw the sandy track as it approached his face. He turned the other cheek and let his jaw dig into the ground. His body’s momentum tumbled harum-scarum through the space that fortunately held nobody else.

  When Aron caught up to him he had brushed most of the sand from his skin and was stretching his quadriceps.

  ‘You all right, Rav?’ Aron came to a full stop and rested, hands on knees, his breathing halted and uneven.

  ‘Let’s crush this last part, race me there.’ Ravno jumped ahead and sprinted toward the hut. Aron pursued him with all he had left but came up short at the hut entrance. Acutely aware of Jasmin Sanjukta, Aron tried to catch his breath.

  Vesta rechecked all the points of Ravno’s vital signs. His chest heaved in and out and her hands and fingers worked their way around. Jasmin Sanjukta, the woman with the kukui strand, walked back the way she had come. Aron jogged after her. Sand stuck to the damp skin on the backs of his legs. Her colorfully patch-worked capa with sleeve fittings was clasped by the neck and just above the belly. A thick black diamond in a silver bracket lay on the top of her forehead where cat-black hair showered down each side. The necklace, a hemp string that held thirteen kukui nuts in line, lay coarsely majestic across her colorful patches. She turned and talked briefly with Aron then continued into the bush. In his eyes she was the bucket of gold at the end of a patchy, pastel rainbow.

  Aron and Ravno sat in the boto going east on the Sunberry, nearing the Duat Canal.

  ‘Aron, thanks for showing me to the Ishi’s. She’s quite an impressive person,’ Ravno said. ‘I can’t understand how efficient and graceful and strong she is, all at the same time.’

  Aron watched the starboard bow grebet. The grebet was a small boy and new on the canals. The boy leaned forward, arms extended, swooping paddle dripping sea water, raised arms, dipped blade pulling water, pushing, boto mobile, dripping sweat in the evening sun. But of course Aron wasn�
��t really watching the starboard bow grebet.

  He said, ‘Yes, she is beautiful.’

  ‘Has she been there forever?’ Ravno asked. ‘I think I remember seeing her when I was younger. I had some sort of skin thing on my feet and the Ishi in Phoyara couldn’t do a thing about it.’

  ‘Who, Vesta? Yup, she’s been there forever.’

  And that other woman. All at once Ravno thought of her, her necklace and patches and all the rest. He felt uneasy at the top of his stomach and obsessed about her in his mind. He thought of the things he didn’t say every time he passed her, how he had hardly looked at her. He took the moments their eyes had met from his memory and stretched them out into novels of time. He narrowed his eyes and looked down to his hands. What was he thinking? She had been only that other woman standing in Vesta’s shadow and now suddenly—and suddenly he saw it. He didn’t think anything of her but it was obvious Aron did. He had seen her through Aron’s eyes and ever since had felt a draw, an urge, or more like a dream-dust flittering of his heart to her.

  ‘Aron, who was that other woman back there, in the colorful capa?’

  Aron looked directly at Ravno for the first time on their trip back toward Phoyara.

  ‘Jasmin Sanjukta. We haven’t known each other long, Ravno, but I have to tell you how wonderful she