Dreamfall (50 page)

I levered myself up the wall, trailing a bright smear. I
pressed my own hands against the invisible surface, triggering more light. The
colors we’d set off already didn’t fade; they kept spreading, widening, echoing
through each other like chords of music.

Suddenly a new pattern of light flickered across the wall,
went soaring toward the ceiling without either of us setting it off.

(It isn’t your touch,) Miya’s voice said inside me. (It’s
your Gift.) She entered the darkened room, her face luminous with reflected
light and perfectly expressionless with concentration as she lit up more and
more of the darkness.

I stood away from the wall, breaking my physical contact
with its surface, trying to see whether the patterns my body had been creating
would stop.

They didn’t; they went on forming like frost, following my
thought, giving form to my every glance and whim. Joby ignored us both,
blissfully lost in uncanny fingerpainting, in rolling his body along the wall
in a wash of incandescence.

I shook my head; the colors zigzagged like lightning. (But I’m
not a teek—)

(Any manifestation of the Gift will trigger it,) Miya said.

I thought of the Hydran picture globes; how once I’d been
able to change the images hidden inside with a thought. (What was this used
for?)

(Beauty—?) Her mental shrug told me she had no more idea than
I did. (Maybe it doesn’t matter,) she thought, and I felt her smile. (Does it?)

I shook my head, watching Joby’s silhouette dance across the
spectrum in front of us. But then I felt Wauno’s medicine pouch bat softly
against my wrist and sudden desolation filled me—
Ioss, regret
—as if she’d
told me a lie.

(What? What is it?) She touched the pouch uncertainly.

I showed her Wauno’s face.

(What happened ... ?)

I let myself remember, letting her see the rest for herself:
that the memory of what Naoh and the Satoh had done to me was only the flotsam
on a sea of blood ....

Miya moaned, pressing her hands to her mouth.

I broke contact, shutting her out of my mind before she sank
any deeper, not able to bear her pain or knowing I’d caused it.

She stared at me, her pupils wide and black, her face garish
with rainbows. I put my arrns around her as she began to turn away; holding her
close to my heart, resting my head against hers, so that I didn’t have to see
her face—so that I didn’t have to violate this chamber’s perfect beauty with my
mind.

Tsar nighr afrer Joby had fallen asleep, Miya led me
silently down through the levels of the monastery to a place where heavy wooden
doors opened in a wall. Beyond the gate a path lay along the face of the cliff
like silver thread, spooling down to the spot where the bridge crossed the
river. There was no Human town on the other shore, here. There was nothing at
all but darkness and silence.

But overhead the stars were everywhere, like sparks blown
from some unimaginable sun-forge, netted in the pale nebula of our frosting
breath. It was like seeing countless neurons firing all at once; like seeing
what it felt like to make love.

I followed two steps behind as Miya led the way. I didn’t
know whether she was touching my thoughts, whether she felt the image that
wanned me against the night’s chill. Her own thoughts had been almost opaque to
me since this afternoon. I didn’t know whether she was giving me the space I’d
needed or hiding from me. And I didn’t know how to ask.

I trailed her down the narrow path through the darkness with
a fumbling caution that couldn’t have matched her grace in broad daylight,
until finally we reached the bridge. There were posts on either side of the
path where the bridge began.

A chain barred the crossing. Locks dangled from each of its slender
links. The chain itself looked corroded, even in this dim light, like it had
barred the path of countless pilgrims since the beginning of Hydran time on
this world.

And yet I could have stepped over it, easily. The chain
wouldn’t have stopped a Human, let alone a Hydran. And why were there so many
locks, some of them ancient, some new—preventing nothing?

Miya moved slowly along the chain from one end to the other,
touching the locks silently, almost reverently.

“What does it mean?” I murmured== not wanting to break the silence
by speaking aloud, but afrai.d of what would happen if I couldn’t make my mind
form the question.

She looked up at me. I thought I saw tears reflecting the
moonlight in the corners of her eyes. “They were put here by lovers,” she said.
“Those who had a nasheirtah. It’s a pledge that they will be namaste for a
lifetime.”

A deep, sourceless pain gutted me. I looked away into the
darkness that was always waiting to close in ....

(Bian,) Miya said softly, inside me. (It isn’t true.)

“What?” I whispered.

(Your mother wasn’t a prostitute ... your father wasn’t a
rapist. If they hadn’t loved each other, you would not have been born.)

I looked back at her. (How—?)
How did you ...
(How do
you know? It could have been—)

(It would not have happened.)

“You’re sure?” I said hoarsely, my thoughts slipping.

She nodded.

“Then why? Why did he leave her in Oldcrty?” My fists tightened.
“Why did he leave me?”

(Maybe it was her choice.) Miya touched my shoulder gently.
(Maybe he didn’t know about you; maybe she didn’t tell him. They were from
different worlds. When worlds collide, things fa|l apart ....) She bent her
head. (Love ... love isn’t stronger than that.)

I remembered the lock I’d seen on the offering pile inside
the prayer cave. I remembered the pain on her face as she’d picked it up and
told me it was Naoh’s. I remembered Navu, a burnout cursing at us from a
back-alley drughole .... I tried to remember Naoh without remembering what she’d
done to me. I couldn’t.

I took Miya’s hand in mine, cold inside colder. A clasped
hand was all the pledge I had to offer, all the promise either one of us could
make, here, now, like this. She moved close; I felt our body heat begin to
combine, warming us both.

Still holding my hand, Miya led me forward again. she
stepped over the chain and waited as I followed, thinking about humility, and
mortality; about how much of what happened to your body was inseparable from
what happened to your mind, or your soul.

Whatever the bridge was made of, it didn’t creak or sway
under our weight. The yielding surface muffled our footsteps until they
disappeared into the sound of the wind. When we reached the middle of the span,
Miya sat down, holding on to the moorings of the handrail, letting her feet
dangle over the abyss.

I settled beside her, taking my time as I eased my
stiffening body down onto the walkway. I looked out and down at the abyss, up
into the giddy heights of the sky, the way Miya was doing now. Sitting beside
her, I felt safe in a way that not even the abyssal heights and depths could
disturb. The moon’s half-revealed face barely dimmed the stars out here, even
though its light was bright enough to show the fragile ghosts of colors in our
clothing. I felt Miya’s thoughts flow out of her, into and around me, embracing
the nightworld like a prayer.

I couldn’t pray. My thoughts were the futile dreams of a
meb-taku. But I remembered other skies, other times I’d looked up in awe at
these same stars in other settings .... I hoped some part of that went with
Miya’s prayers into infinity.

We sat together for a long time, suspended between worlds;
huddled next to each other, the warmth of our bodies keeping the cold air and
the uncertain future at bay. I tried not to remember that once I’d sat with
Kissindre Perrymeade in too much the same way, warming each other in the chill
predawn air of another world while we waited for the day.
Here
and
now
were all I had left, would have to be all the time in the world. I pulled
Miya closer, kissing her, the contact exchanging heat, hunger, two souls.

At last I felt her mind fold me inside wann wings, and she
tele-ported us back to the monastery, to the comfort of our makeshift bed. We
crawled under the piled blankets, where we could peel off the layers of
clothing that kept us from taking the final step that our trembling,
goosefleshed bodies ached for. We made love, urgently because we couldn’t wait,
gently because it was all my healing body could endure, silently to keep from
waking Joby, completely, until there was no urgency left in us, only a mindless
sense of peace that would hold back tomorrow, at least until morning came ....

I woke again at dawn to a changeless, perfect sky, to the
timeless present of a long dead past. I told myself our past, our future—even
the thought of one—was meaningless, here in a place where the impossible still
happened.

Joby was already awake. I heard him in the chamber beyond
the filigreed wall, holding a one-sided conversation with the taku as they swooped
down from their nesting places to eat the bits of fruit and bread he handed out
to them. I felt their thoughts brush his, and mine, with the softness of fur,
and realized that maybe the conversation wasn’t one-sided.

Miya was next to me, still asleep. I lay back, just looking
at her, realizing that we’d never seen each other’s bodies in the light of day.
My eyes followed the curve of her back from the edge of the blankets up to the
nape of her neck. At the base of her neck I found a pattern of colors half-hidden
beneath the snarled gold of her hair: a tattoo—a kind of mandala, a circle
formed of intricate geometries and bounded by intersecting lines.

Miya stirred, rolling over to look up at me drowsily.
(What—?) she thought, her mind smiling.

“The tattoo. I never saw it before.” I pulled my shirt on as
I began to shiver. It was stiff with dried blood; I hid a grimace as it caught
at my healing skin.

The smile spread to her face. She reached over her shoulder
to touch the pattern. “ft’s a sign of the Way ... hidden, yet always with you,
joining the mind and the body, making a person whole. They used to be done at
birth, to grow with the child for a lifetime. A few of us still have one ....”
She glanced away, reaching for her clothes as she began to shiver too.

“I saw something like it at the Community Hall. It \ryas ...
hidden.”

“Did you?” She turned back to look at me. Her smile came out
again, and widened. (Of course,) her mind said. She rested her head against my
shoulder.

“What do you mean?”

“It was a ...
linpoche.
”
She shrugged, like
there was no equivalent Human word. “Not everyone senses them. Some people go
their whole lives without ever seeing one.”

I shook my head, wondering. I remembered the look Hanjen had
given me that day as he entered the courtyard and saw me standing there. I
kissed her open mouth as she ran her hands down my side, over my tunic, over my
skin, not flinching as she found old scars or half-healed wounds, accepting
every part of me.

But as her hand reached my hip, she paused. “What is this?”
she murrnured, touching the tattoo that climbed the back of my thigh. “I felt
it last night.”

“You—felt rt?”

She nodded and shrugged again, like it involved a sense too
elusive for words. I caught a nebulous image of energies I was blind to.

I pushed the covers aside, twisting my body so that she
could see the rest of it, the dragon/lizard with a collar of holographic fire. “My
tattoo. I have one too, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

(Draco—?) I heard her breath catch. “Why do you wear Draco’s
logo?”

I lay back again, wincing. “I don’t,” I said. “I don’t know,
I mean.” I looked down. “I don’t even remember getting tattooed. I was doing a
lot of drugs, then.”

She looked up at me, half frowning.

“It’s nothing,” I repeated. “It doesn’t mean anything.” I
pulled the blankets up over it and reached for my pants. We finished dressing
in silence.

But as she got up to go and find Joby, I caught her hand,
drawing her back down beside me. “What really happened between Naoh and Navu?
What—twisted her like that? Show me, Miya ... I have the right to know.”

She sat down cross-legged on the blankets, pushing her
tangled hair back from her face, stroking it with her hands like she was trying
to calm her thoughts. “Naoh ...” She spoke out loud, like I had, as if the
memories were too volatile to share directly. “Naoh turned wild and bitter,
after our parents died ...” she took

DKEAMF’ALL I 335

a deep breath, “and we learned we were sterile. Hanjen tried
to help her, but he couldn’t reach her; she was too strong. She blamed our
parents for their own deaths. She blamed the Community for being helpless
against the Humalls—” She broke off and took another unsteady breath. “Naoh
became one of Borosage’s drug dealers. She never used the drugs herself, but
she sold them ....” She shook her head, running her restless fingers through
her hair.

“And then she met Navu; she found her nasheirtah .... He was
an activist, a Satoh, like our parents. When they found each other, Naoh
stopped dealing drugs for the Humans. Navu gave her back her pride in our
heritage and her belief in the things our parents died for. But when she tried
to turn her back on drug selling, Borosage had them both arrested. Eventually
he let Naoh go, but not Navu. He told her to keep selling his drugs or she’d never
see Navu again. He kept Navu in prison for a year. By the time Navu was
released, he was addicted ....”

I pressed my hands against my eyes, seeing pain as phantom
colors.

“Naoh went on selling drugs so that she could get them for
Navu.” Miya’s gaze was lost in the trackless blue of the walls when I looked up
again. “But ... but he wasn’t the same. They broke him. That was when
Naoh—changed. She stopped dealing and tried to get Navu’s habit treated. You
saw how well that worked.” The words were flat, beyond emotion. “She finally
turned her anger where it belonged, on the Humans. She joined me in studying
with the oyasin. And then ...” Her voice faded again, and she rubbed her face. “Then
Naoh had the vision. She believed that she could save us; that all her
suffering had only been to make her strong—”