Eyes in the Water (16 page)

Three help us,
Arman thought, again
unsure if he ought to tell Brenol.

“Why the secrecy?” Brenol asked. “Does it
have to do with the poisons?”

Arman wanted to laugh, more due to pain than
mirth. “I wish it did, Bren. I wish it did.”

The world shall grow cold, and ice will slowly creep
over all.

-Genesifin

It took two days for Darse and Colette to bury them
all, and the labor was brutally hard. Dirt and death clung to their
bodies, clothes, and nostrils. Their fingernails chipped, and their
muscles ached from both the exertion and the chill. It was hellish,
yet purpose drove them.

Colette did not speak, but Darse observed her
attentively. She was different, and not a soul could deny it. She
housed a fire within where Darse before had only seen vacancy,
pain, and hatred, and with each cadaver laid to rest, the flames
grew steadier and stronger. So despite every urge he experienced to
rush to Brenol, Darse could not begrudge either woman or maralane
this needed task. Brenol would have to wait, or accomplish his work
without them. The young man was capable—Darse knew this down to his
bones—but to leave such weight on one man’s shoulders was not
ideal.

After they had completed the burials on the
second day, they separated to bathe in Ziel. Darse ventured west
several paces while Colette meandered down into a thick stand of
trees. She scanned the area, stripped off her filthy clothing, and
scampered in a huddle out to the water. Her dark hair fell over her
shivering body like a blanket, and her arms hugged her small frame
to help conceal its remaining nakedness. She lowered in and jerked
her way out to the deep, skin dancing with pins and needles.

The sharpness of the water did not diminish,
yet its cutting freeze held an unforeseen relish. It smarted and
awakened without subtlety, and it seemed an appropriate dovetail to
finding the maralane. She smiled wryly and clamped down her
chattering jaw. With determination, she inhaled and dipped beneath
the surface to wash soil and scale from her hair and face. Despite
the water’s sting, some tickling instinct pressed her to open her
eyes. Her body shot back a hand span in the jolting realization
that she was being watched.

A maralane peered at her from not more than
two arm lengths away. It was only a fish-child, but the princess’s
heart still thundered with adrenaline as she stared back with wide
eyes. She keenly felt her vulnerability and nakedness.

The child held up a small hand—in greeting or
assurance, Colette was left to guess. Yet it was not the motion but
the girl herself that disarmed Colette. She was gorgeous. Her
braids crowned her head in ivory and green, and her large almond
eyes were a soft amber. Her tails came out in a fanfare of flowing
beauty, and her scales glistened black and gray. The girl’s gentle
gaze spoke of both simplicity and intellect, and she occasionally
flicked her tails to remain stationary in Ziel’s undercurrents.

Colette did not want to move. She remained
under until her lungs heaved and smarted and her vision clouded
with spots, but she was finally forced to kick her way to the
surface. As she gasped in air, a small webbed hand squeezed hers.
It was surprisingly warm but as smooth as polished marble.

When the maralane did not surface, she ducked
under again. The maralane smiled affectionately, and the lunitata
was confounded. The maralane people were markedly disinterested in
the upper-world, and to behave like this was far from
characteristic.

She drew close to Colette’s ear and
whispered—her voice astonishingly clear in the water—“Thank you.
Thank you for burying them. My family.”

Death has melted their hardness too.

Colette squeezed the maralane’s hand and
granted a small dip of her head in the icy water. It was lacking,
but her only way to reply.

She rose to breathe once more, then dove back
under to meet the girl.

The child suddenly opened her mouth in a
morose and bitter expression. “It wasn’t just the poison,” she said
quietly. She leaned in to whisper in Colette’s ear. “Please
remember us.”

The words seeped into Colette, and sorrow
stabbed at her with the unforgiving fierceness of a blade. As the
webbed fingers caressed Colette’s frozen hand, she fought to choke
down sobs that could never issue out in the water. She felt
deadened to all her previous nuresti troubles in the wake of such
anguish over the lake-people.

Seeing the human’s grief, the maralane bent
her young face forward to kiss the lunitata’s cheek, and then hand,
with tender lips. The kisses were lighter than a fairy’s touch, but
they made Colette’s insides weak with mourning. The child wistfully
released her and brushed away, tails gracefully trailing. She was
lost within the water’s darkness in moments.

Colette emerged choking, like a babe seeking
its first gasping breath, and forced her body to the shallows. She
stood dripping and bare as the wind met her icy limbs but stared
unblinking into the misty air, still removed from the concrete.
Finally, she brushed the water off her face and stalked from the
waters into the silence of the pressing wood.

~

There were several more days of travel ahead
of Darse and Colette, but the journey proved to be less taxing for
both. Colette was a new woman. She did not speak much, but she
shone with light, her head held erect and posture aright. The
hunched figure full of hate was no more, although she still
appeared to be tortured by some unnamed agony. Darse could not
discern the ailment, but at least he could breathe easier knowing
she was coming back to life.

The two followed the mountainous paths around
Ziel and by the second day had reached the eastern lugazzi
territory beneath Brovingbune. A plateau spread before them as flat
as a plate, and they tramped across its surface of waving,
knee-high yellow grasses. The sun glinted brightly in their eyes
but was not unpleasant, and the wind tugged at their clothing and
toyed with the swaying reeds. A song of some unseen bird rippled
through the air. Darse did not want to breathe lest he disturb the
dense beauty of the moment. He drank each element in as though
parched.

Despite all efforts to seal himself in the
experience, he spied Colette casting a strange look upon him. He
waited and feigned ignorance, but the glace came again.

She finally spoke. “Darse?”

The idyllic beauty seemed to cower back and
hide at the intrusion of words. He wished he could hoard it up in
his arms. He sighed quietly; solace was so fleeting.

“Yes?” Darse responded.

“Why do you choose to live in Granoile?”

Something lay hidden in her voice that Darse
could not pinpoint. He looked at her curiously. Her eyes were clear
but stoic. He rubbed his hands together as he realized that the
inquiry elicited annoyance within him. Many unsettling questions
ushered in with it.

Why should I care what she thinks?

He responded flatly but not unkindly. “I like
the frawnish. They’re an interesting people.”

“That was not what I meant.”

Darse sighed, perturbed by the bizarre
sensitivity he felt at her probing. “What is it, Colette?”

“I meant…” Her emerald eyes met his and held
him with a strange power. “Why do you separate yourself here?”

Oh.

If she had elbowed him solidly in the gut it
would not have been as painful.

“They will never accept you as their own,”
she continued, although the man’s eyes now drifted off into the sea
of flowing gold. “Nor,” she added, “do I really think you want them
to…”

Darse lidded his eyes and felt his face burn
at her words. Insight into the world around him had left him blind
to his own blundering person. His tongue refused to move, so he
pressed forward silently, wondering when his insides would solidify
again.

Colette reached sideways to squeeze his hand.
They walked with hands folded together for several minutes. He
seemed to grow easier with the gentle consolation of her touch,
even if he refused to reply. Colette allowed the peace to ease back
in between them.

She finally spoke, hesitantly, but with
tenderness, “I’ve seen the manner in which you gaze at my
mother.”

Darse forced his feet to maintain movement
although his legs suddenly felt stiff and numb. His face flushed
yet again, now to a deep crimson, and his heart thundered terribly
in his eardrums. His reaction left little doubt as to the accuracy
of her statement—for either of them.

“Darse?” Colette’s voice was pleading and
soft. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you too.”

The man could not feign indifference, even
his weak attempt at it, any longer. He halted and released her
hand. “She has no affection for an old man spit from the portals,”
he said coldly. “It doesn’t matter that I was born here. I’m still
foreign.”

Colette smiled and tilted her head forward
with raised brows. “She shares a
roof
with foreignness.
She’s lived with a nurest, a keeper—whatever it is that I am. But
she has lost too much. She needs love, Darse.”

Darse remained silent.

“I don’t think it’s as complicated as you
believe,” she added tenderly.

His thoughts raced and returned to the same
fact that forever haunted him, that refused to dislodge from the
tracts of his mind. He harbored dread at what the words would bring
but suddenly found his fears tumbling forth from his mouth
regardless. “The black fever,” he whispered hoarsely. “The icar. I
am cursed. My name and line are nothing but a blight upon this
world.” Darse’s gold eyes grew fierce. “I see the glances. I know
their meaning. I am a torment. They wish me away because I remind
them of the fever. I only bring fear.”

He allowed his pack to slide from his
shoulders to the swaying grasses. It thudded softly, and he raised
his hands to cup his face. His chest caved inward in weariness.
Massada had helped him in so many ways, but too long had the weight
of his past burrowed into his soul. He suddenly felt pocked by its
devouring darkness.

The lunitata tugged both hands gently from
his features and held them tightly in her own. “You were but a
baby. How could you be the cause of this plague?” She shook her
head in negation, and her light cast shimmers like a pocket mirror
scattering the sun’s reflection. “Wherever this started, it
certainly was not with you.”

And it will not end with him either.
The eerie voice of premonition resounded in her ears and shook her
down to her bones. She cowered back from the voice—too real, too
dark—but maintained a firm grasp on Darse’s large hands.

The man looked back at the princess, unaware
of her ruminations. He feared his voice would crack, but when he
spoke he found it merely small. “I… You would have me?”

Colette laughed, dispelling the quivering
dread that tickled her insides. “You have any doubt?”

He responded with a morose half-smile. She
met his gaze seriously. “I would have you as a father. I would have
you for my mother. And I would not simply permit it. I desire it…
And ask it.”

Darse marveled at the strong woman before
him. Her face was engraved with power and decision and bursting
with light. She was not the creature who had left Veronia with soul
bent and heart wrought. Colette was alive.

Abruptly, Colette dropped to her belly before
him and burrowed her head in the ground in marked humility. She
drew her index and middle fingers to her lips, kissed them, and
with a graceful sweep touched them to his foot like a butterfly
lighting between blossoms. The hand then retracted the space of
three digits and lay palm open before him. Her prostrate form
remained motionless, save the dark tresses that swept as one with
the whipping yellow grasses around her.

Darse had never been the recipient of the
crushing pardon before, but he had seen it. It was not a common
spectacle, and it drew sharp inhales when it did occur. The
surrounding crowd would watch rapt as the procumbent Massadan
awaited either forgiveness or a crushing blow. He had seen both,
and the memory of the vulnerable hand breaking beneath the fury of
a boot had left him cringing for seasons. And now Colette offered
the same eloquent apology for a grave wrongdoing, and his
acceptance was a free choice.

Darse knelt immediately and scooped up her
hand—cool from the wind and soil—and raised her up. He cupped her
cheek in his palm and found his heart churning in confusion.
“You’ve done me no wrong.”

“I have, I have.” Her eyes streamed with
remorse, but she kept her face up with a simple dignity. “I’ve been
deadened by anger and greed and hatred. And my selfishness is a
burden too heavy for me to endure.”

He nodded, understanding. The weight of one’s
own choices could drown a soul. “But you have done nothing to
me.”

Her gaze remained straight and focused. “I
know it doesn’t make sense entirely, but you saved me from Jerem.
At great personal cost, too… And I waited too long to truly accept
the gift of life.”

Darse sighed softly. “I do not think you owe
me anything, Colette. Truly. But I give you what you ask. I’d never
withhold forgiveness from you.”

“Your mercy is my bounty,” she replied.

He labored to his feet and offered her his
hand. She took it easily and lithely drew herself aright, brushing
blades of gold from her blue attire.

“Let’s not speak of these things again,” he
said.

She assented with a graceful movement of her
chin, and in the tilt, Darse could see that he need not have made
such a request; the woman before him was far too regal and composed
to dwell on the past any longer. She had made amends—more with
herself than with any other—and would not trouble herself with
guilt and tail dragging. Even now, she was forging ahead with a
blazing heart.