173 - The purest expression of our wish

Relax and feel and breathe in acceptance was all I needed to do then; afterwards, however, he had an assignment for me. “You will tell those to whom you are closest that at heart you’ve been believing this.” It was only after having been put through the tenar menhu, I think, that I could even have borne him saying this. Instead of wanting to rip all the veins out of my own body, I just said, “A-e kras.”

Niku… Skorsas… Kall, when next he’s here… my mother… I took a deep breath. “Starting today,” he added. I said “A-e kras” again.

†

“So what trouble is biting our butts this time?” Niku could have such a way with words. I worried that she was in a snappish mood; between winter and being eight moons pregnant, she was mostly grounded these days, doing the paperwork of the school and Yeoli-Niah business. Even though the hot water that runs through the walls of the Hearthstone Independent is what keeps it warm, she’d wanted a stone-stove in our bedchamber, where we had now gone to be private from the children. I raked the coals with the stick to brighten them up, and put some wood on. I’d asked Tawaen to allow no interruptions short of urgency, and he’d said, “Yes, Dad.”

“Sometimes it still amazes me, to be called Dad,” I said now. “I suppose because for so long I didn’t really expect it… or much of it.” She said nothing to that, so I just began explaining what had happened with Surya.

“You were trained to love submitting,” she said.

“That’s what I said to him. That and, when you’re so powerful, you want total respite from it sometimes. That’s not it… not all of it. Or even most.” I recounted the rest, to the moment of truth. “Love, without restriction… I have never accepted. I left out… something else he did. It’s something else again when the threat of death is there.”

“So of course you fell in love with another warrior... in the Mezem,” she said.

Though her eyes looked too wet, I let out a bitter laugh. “Of course.” I had to get up and pace now, though that meant letting go her hand, so I did. “You see how it works, how it always is with him—just state it baldly like that, in its full truth, and you see how fikken crazy it is!” Any coincidence, that I felt like swearing in Arkan?

“I thought I knew how to love. I said that. He said, you know how to give love. You just don’t know how to accept it.”

“Without it being forced on you,” she said. Another facet of it; I grabbed my forelock and felt the tears begin. “Breathe, love.”

“I am so fikken crazy. I am so fikken kyashin crazy.”

“No, omores. It just seems that way. It has to all get dragged out before you can fix it… that Haian word, tenar…”

“Menhu, exactly. That’s what he did, with this too.”

Her eyes turned quizzical and a touch suspicious, through the tears. “But isn’t that forcing love on you, in a way?”

“No. I could walk away any time if I wanted to. It’s all been my choice; I chose to swear the oath.” All-Spirit help me, if I was not clear on that.

“True. So... what does this mean between the two of us?” I thought I saw a touch of fear, in those opal-ebon eyes that were usually so fearless. Who could blame her, when I had become so unpredictable?

“He ordered me to tell you,” I said. “And the others to whom I am most close. It’s not as if I don’t know that you don’t really want my death… Niku, every now and then it makes me utterly sick, how fikken crazy I am. This is the worst. I keep saying, ‘This is the worst,’ and then there’s something even worse... All-Spirit help me, I don’t want to know what’s next.”

“Virani-e,” she said, “would you please come down here so I can hold you without chasing you around? I don’t want to chase you to make you feel loved.” She heaved the bulk of her middle over on the couch, to make room for me. “Even if that’s what I did from the first.” I wanted to keep pacing, but it was as if I heard Surya’s voice commanding me, ‘Accept.’ She held me so tenderly it hurt.

“When I think about it… shit,” I whispered. “I’ve made everyone chase me. Kallijas had to duel me. Skorsas had to work his heart out... You... well, you remember.”

“Don’t... don’t all warriors have some of this?” she said. “Some people say we are pursued by or courted all our lives by Him.”

“Probably. Surya said it’s not uncommon. And yet you don’t.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “In some sense the Aniah flirt with Him every time we fly.”

“But that doesn’t mean you seek Him. That’s not the truest reason you fly.”

“We just accepted the deaths, before Diyadesai came up with the better way to launch,” she said, thoughtfully. “Perhaps we are in love with Life more… You need to get up and pace again, don’t you? Go on.. I’m still here.” I was itching with it, so I did.

“He said... I have to accept... I have to accept it, without the condition. Insane, isn’t it? I have to.” She did not answer. She was not sobbing, but a tear ran down her cheek. “So,” I said. “I’ve told you. One done, two to go.”

“Omores,” she said. “I love you... but I’m afraid that telling you that is pressing you into accept it… as if I am taking away your choice, somehow. Since we fell in love that way... how do we change it? How do we not go on the same way?”

My tears were enough to blind me now. I paced by feel. “I don’t know. I didn’t fall in love with you that way any more than I ever fell in love with anyone else. It’s always been there. Since long before I was old enough to fall in love. It’s not just my lovers. It’s everyone. Friends, family, fellow warriors, citizens with whom I have the bond of semanakraseye… my people, who I love.”

“We walk on eggshells, and take our love out of that place and put it somewhere else... somewhere without pain or imprisonment.” Maybe if I think about that for a year, I thought, I’ll understand it. And another five to know how to do it.

A voice in me whispered, as if it were Surya’s, ‘You jest, but you have that time now.’ I remembered the flash of seeing a long life before me, with enough of a jolt that Niku asked if I was all right.

“How do I leave you space enough to not be trapped?” she said. “Love, the only way I know is to try and feel my way into it… I need to feel the difference somehow.” She was translating it into what haunted her, as people do; no matter, it was close enough. “But… if the only way we learned to love is going to kill you or help you die... I can’t, in conscience, love you.” Tears spilled hard down her cheeks.

I pulled on my hair with two hands, now. Niku… now, of all times, while I feel I am flying apart, I need you to hold yourself together. “Should I sign consideration again, then?” I said. Maybe it’s best. Let her away from the cesspit of madness that is me.

She took in a long deep breath between her teeth, so it hissed like a snake. “I didn’t fight so hard to love you just to give up. There is going to be a way to do this.” It brought heart back into me, at least some.

“Surya said to me, when I am with you or Kall or Skorsas, and we don’t know what to do, we should go to him.”

She signed chalk. “We are so blessed, to have him. It was my fear talking again, love. It’s nothing.”

“What are you afraid of? What”—I couldn’t help but let slip a smile—“is in it?”

“Of being spurned, naturally. My biggest one.”

I sat beside her. “Niku, don’t be afraid of that... Never be afraid of that.” I made my arms around her say the same thing, even more clearly. It was stubborn in her, though, as stubborn as my own delusion about love was in me. Both of us deep in it, we agreed to seek Surya’s help, and I went to fetch him. Maybe he knew it was coming; he’d left the day open.

It was mostly a reiteration. Each of us had a weak point too severe for just one learning, as my forgetting it entire had proven. He made us tell each other again. The blindnesses were even funny, at times, as when I avowed to her, with the most intense tenderness I could convey, “You so deserve to be loved.” She answered, the same way, “Yes… and you?” and I said, “Me? What about me?” Even Surya burst out laughing, at that one. Or when, after I managed to tear the words out of myself, “I deserve love even if I live long,” I said to him, “Surya, can you just kyashin hit me over the head with a sledgehammer until I’m sane?” and he said, without hesitation, “Sorry, it’s not that easy.”

Finally, he said, “Here’s what I want both of you to do. Niku, it’s a healer’s recommendation; Virani-e, it’s an order.”

He signed us to embrace. She tipped forward around her belly like a round-bottomed bird, laughing. “I love you!” she said. “I love you too,” I breathed back. “I’m not finished the instructions yet,” Surya said.

“The moment the two of you hold each other, it’s in your minds, whether you know it or not.” He laid one hand on the side of my head. “It’s fine for me to accept this, so long as I stick to my death-schedule.” He laid the other on the side of hers. “It’s fine for me to accept this, so long as I keep in mind that in truth I’m undeserving.

“You make the words ‘I love you’ into a lie, and each other into liars, by these thoughts. See the truth, for the first time ever.”

I clenched my eyes shut, but clung to her. By the movement of her head, I knew she had cast her eyes downward, but she clung to me. I felt her break out in a sweat, as tears filled my own eyes, then sobs racked me all over. “You each refuse yourself the gift of the love in the other’s eyes. First thing both of you did, the moment I said it was not look at the other… look at each other. Forget whether you deserve it or not. Just accept it for what it really is.”

As we locked eyes, both of us disbelieving, I wondered, how many times before we both grasp this? But then it was as if a knot unraveled in one pull, in both of us. It was as if I were seeing her eyes for the first time; and by the look in them, I knew it was the same for her. It was tears of joy then, and kisses, and a harmony of touch between us that came from letting all the hardnesses towards each other go. We felt as we had in the Mezem, in the first all-encompassing roar of love.

Of course another hardness came up, natural enough with the swelling of love in our hearts. Seeing it in my aura, no doubt, Surya left us, once we’d kissed his hands. We gave each other the purest expression of our wish for each other’s happiness, to exhaustion.

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