Idol of Blood (3 page)

Three: Expulsion

Words drifted past her like the vacant sound of petitioners'
vetmas
, mere purling on the Anamnesis.

“She's not well. Can't this wait until morning?” Jak's words, anxious whispers, bobbed along the surface.

They'd been together in Rhyman, but they weren't in Rhyman now. What was it Ra had gone to Rhyman to do? Her mind was like mist curling, doubling back. There had been something…the temple. Yes, she had lived in a temple once, the object of adulation. She remembered flowers thrown at her feet—when had that been?—and flowers grew in spring. Spring was coming to the highlands. It would be time soon for planting, sacrifices for prosperity…or, no, they didn't sacrifice to her any longer, did they?

“Not well?” Reluctant, uncomfortable words skipped along after Jak's. “The Meer are always well. Apparently, they don't even die like proper people.”

Once, the Meer had been abundant, the flowering of imagination blooming up from the reeds of the river. In those days, one made one's petitions before the Meer—and then devoured him. Like eating a magic calf, ingesting Meerflesh would assure one's wishes were granted. That had been before Ra's time—had it? How old was she? A little girl had asked her that once. A little girl with eyes like ink.

“I beg to differ with you, Peta. They do die. Don't they.”

Someone died
. Ra drew a strand of hair through her fingers, watching it, watching the room through it. Ai,
that was terrible.
Blood and bits of something like melon burst across the steps. She pulled another black strand beside the first and wondered that it wasn't gray. She was old.

No, she was an infant.
Remember the snow?
How white, like the center of the sun. Her toes were cold in it, purpling at the tips, and her eyes were opened for the first time under a darkening Haethfalt sky, and there was a man, beautiful. No, a woman. Neither. The gray eyes had looked at Ra and lit up for a brief moment in surprise and delight at the appearance of the goddess. And then the look was gone and the eyes pretended to frown, pretended not to like her, not to desire her.

What if Ra had been taken there in the snow? That would have been lovely. Cold. Ra was a virgin. But, no, this was a woman, wasn't it? No phallus to stand erect and admit desire, no phallus covered in gold paint. This was Jak. Sweet Jak. She smiled at Jak. She could smell the desire, no phallus needed, that Jak's body had at last professed. How beautiful Jak had been, spread before Ra on the floor of liquid marble—
no, that was another
—taken by Ra to the ultimate expression of pleasure. Aroused, laid, climaxed before Ra had ever touched the sweet temple of her lover's sex.

Perching her arms on Jak's shoulder beside her, she spoke softly at Jak's ear. “I want to fuck you.”

“
What?
” Jak pulled Ra's hands down to the bench, trying to keep her still like a mischievous child. Had she said what Jak thought she said? She was laughing. Rem and Peta and the rest of the mound had been discussing her expulsion from the moundhold, were calling her despicable things: psychotic, avaricious, indulgent, daft. They were shutting her out, replacing the woman they'd known with this folkloric creation, displaying their ignorance. They didn't harbor recreant Meer. It was simply common sense. The Meer were no concern of theirs. They suggested she might murder someone without warning, to which Geffn, symbolically positioned among the rest of the moundhold opposite Jak and Ra, had nodded dully.

And here sat Ra, smiling at Jak, whispering of sex. Inappropriately, her words had instantly drawn a bead of wetness from between Jak's legs.

Jak ignored it. “Why don't you answer these absurd suspicions, Ra? Tell them they have nothing to fear.”

“Renaissance prevaricates.” Ra returned to playing with her hair. “Someone told me that once.” The others shifted uncomfortably.

“I must hear it from Ra.” Rem's expression was grim. “Are you truly one of them?”

Ra spread out her hands as if to show they held no weapons. Though for Ra, of course, none would be needed. “One of them?” she repeated. “
Maísch ahnahttas
.”

The moundholders exchanged looks.

“And what did she just say?” asked Rem.

“I don't know.” Jak laid a hand on Ra's arm. “Ra, you spoke in Deltan.”

“Did I?” Her focus seemed vague. “I am one of you. I am Ra.”

“But are you Meer?” insisted Peta.

“Of course.”

It was so permanent. So final. So matter-of-fact. They were stricken into silence for a moment.

Rem drew in a breath and spoke. “Then you're not one of us,” he decreed. “We have never harbored any of that breed. We stay out of Deltan politics.”

Jak jumped up from the bench, ears almost deafened by the blood pounding in them. “This is not politics, Oldman. This is one of your daughters. Her name is in the moundhold.”

“Not anymore,” said Rem. “I'm sorry. It was a mistake.”

Dumbfounded, Jak looked at Geffn, but Geffn was silent, complicit. Why had they brought her here from Rhyman and her temple? Why had they even bothered?

“If you had consulted us,” said Rem as if in answer to Jak's thoughts, “we would have voted against your going to the Delta. Yet you involved Geffn in this. You endangered both Geffn and yourself in pursuit of a recreant. She left. You should have let her go.”

Jak stared at them, the silent, collective mind in agreement. They were the family that had been for Jak what Fyn and Kol had never been. They had accepted every awkward circumstance Jak had presented: the handfasting to Geffn, two years Jak's junior, when he was only eighteen; the gradual change in Jak from female to ungendered; the divorce, unspoken but obvious; the insinuation of Ahr into the fringes of the community. And once, Ra.

But now they stood against Jak, immovable, unfamilial. A mound of strangers. Jak took Ra's arm above the elbow and held it out in its narrow kerum-brown sleeve. Ra smiled.

“Look at her,” Jak insisted, pained. “Don't you see she has wasted? Don't you see she's not well?” Geffn lowered his eyes. At least he was ashamed.

Peta looked steadily at Jak. “I see madness.”

Jak swung Ra into a circle of protectiveness, arms shielding her. She seemed to float with Jak as in a dance.

“RemPetaJakGeffnMellKeiren,” said Rem solemnly.

“No,” said Jak. “RemPetaGeffnMellKeiren.”

Ra watched as Jak packed the small assortment of dungarees, work shirts and sweaters. A dress hung solitary in the empty wardrobe, fawn lace. It must have belonged to the other Jak, the wife. It was a wedding dress.

Ra had nothing to bring away. She stood in the doorway, watching Jak dismantle the trappings of home, of belonging.

She leaned against the post. How sad Jak looked. Ra seemed to do that to people. “I can go back to the Delta. Your people are here.”

Jak looked up. “
No
. No, Ra. How can you talk of leaving me?”

“I only want you to have an option. It isn't your fault I'm what I am. Why should you suffer for it?” For Jak was suffering. It was palpable.

Jak straightened and slung the duffel of clothes and personal effects over one shoulder, crossing to Ra beneath the lintel to take her face in both rough hands and kiss her. “I would suffer a thousand times this if you left me.”

Ra put her hand over Jak's heart, cupping the small mound beneath the shirt. Her secret.
Hers
. Jak flinched, made a sound. But the sound wasn't one of discomfort. Ra commanded Jak. If Jak had a cock, it would be standing at attention. Hers. She was selfish, always had been. It came of being dressed and bathed and anointed by right for years without number.

They wrapped themselves for the outdoors once more and climbed the curved stairs out of Mound RemPetaGeffnMellKeiren. Jak made no acknowledgment of their former moundmates as they went, and so there were no good-byes. Geffn, in any case, had shut himself in his room.

A nearly perfect moon hung cold and silver above the moor.

“Where are we going?” asked Ra brightly.

“Mound Ahr,” said Jak. “It's empty.”

Of course it was, for Ahr had… What had Ahr done? She was absent. She hid in her societal virginity somewhere, round in the belly from the inspiration of a god.

A shadow crossed the moon, and Ra stumbled, a bit of nothing in Jak's arms as Jak caught her. The mound wasn't far. It should have been; it had been a good distance in the snow on that first evening of her renaissance. But she'd been thinking of nothing, and somehow they'd crossed a great deal of terrain.

Inside, the mound was fresh and clean. Like a Meeric temple, the window had no pane. Only the blanket, stretched across the empty casement, kept out the elements. It was cold, but Ra conjured a fire. Jak shivered despite the warm flare as the blaze sprang up. It was so like that other night when Ra had uncovered a dead daughter in the melting snow of memory. She didn't seem to mind the association of this place. Perhaps it was nothing to the stain of her past life on everything in Rhyman. Perhaps this, in comparison, was virgin territory.

Ra crossed the room to where Jak stood dubiously by the table, having set down the duffel. She took off Jak's wrap. “I want to fuck you,” she said again, and Jak laughed, but Ra was deadly serious.

She lifted Jak to the table—it was startling, being lifted off the ground by a reed of a woman—and leapt over Jak's body with the nimbleness of a cat. Jak was stunned, flooded with an instant, insistent need for her. With Geffn, Jak had always been the instigator, retaining control, but Ra made it seem an honor to be possessed.

While Ra tore the buttons from Jak's shirt, Jak reached up to pull the sleek sweater over Ra's head, but it was tight and intractable, as though she'd poured it over herself. Perhaps she had.

“Rip it open.” Ra's voice and eyes were intense with desire. “I can make another.” Jak didn't pause to consider, just obeyed, gripping the fabric at the center in both fists and tearing it into a V to free Ra from the garment. Though not as full as they'd been when she'd stood unabashedly naked in Jak's room on that first day, still, Ra's breasts were extraordinary. So Jak had noticed them that day, despite sophistic inward assurances that Ra's parts were inconsequential. Of course Jak had. What a liar Jak was.

Ra sat back on her heels and drew Jak's hands to her, placing them against the pale curves of her breasts. “Touch me,” she whispered. “I have never been touched.” Of course it was true. Ra's body was newly renaissanced from the ashes of her self-conjured immolation.

Jak cupped the smooth skin, thumbs tracing over the garnet peaks, and when Ra closed her eyes with a soft sigh, Jak dared to slip one arm around her waist and draw her down to taste the pristine skin. She seemed to melt against Jak's tongue like a delicately sweetened confection of butter mint or marzipan.

But Jak's brief taste was taken away without warning. Ra was moving downward, prowling. She ripped the laces from Jak's pants, and Jak felt a sharp tremor, brief, and gone in an instant, like a preliminary climax.

“
Ai
, but you're beautiful.” Ra traced Jak's sex with her finger as she revealed it. She kissed the fine hair at the top of the mound, plying her fingers against the heat of Jak's flesh. Jak tensed, waiting for them to penetrate, but Ra stopped and brushed the back of her hand against Jak's cheek.

“
Mené
Jak,” whispered Ra. “
Mené
lif
. What is it? What have I done?”

“What do you mean?” Jak's brow wrinkled. “Why did you stop?”

Ra lifted a thread of hair from Jak's warm cheek. “
Mené
midtlif
. How can you lie to me?”

“Lie?” Jak pulled away, putting a subtle space of inches between them, adopting the protective stance: the neutral Jak, the unaffected. “What are you talking about?”

“How can I take pleasure in what clearly torments you? How can you expect me to invade you as though I were some unfeeling thing?”

“I have
no
idea what you're talking about,” Jak snapped, sitting up. “Why are you doing this? Stop it!”

“
Mené midtlif
—”

“What is that?” Jak demanded. “What are you saying?”

Ra reached out to Jak and grasped one bristling shoulder despite resistance. “It means my love,” said Ra. “My love.”

Jak's heart twisted with conflict, suspended on the corkscrew of this word. Jak hadn't asked for this. It was a burden passed between them, too tremendous to lift. Never mind that Jak had said to Ahr, “I do love Ra.” It wasn't the same. That was not this. That was much safer.

Jak withdrew with resolve. Here it was again: presumption. Ra was no better than Ahr, no better than Geffn. She thought she owned Jak because of a touch between them.
More than a touch, Jak
. The thought was quashed. Ra had demeaned their affection.

Jak felt clammy, exposed. The gradual slip, the reluctant allowances, the concessions Jak made to those whom it might be said Jak loved—they were idiotic mistakes, eroding the identity Jak had built with difficulty. No more and no less than the idiotic mistake of Geffn, corrupted at Jak's hands, for which Jak had paid with the bond of matrimony. A terrible feeling was stealing over Jak again, the feeling of being caught, and caught up, in doing something shameful and debased.

Fyn had caught Jak once, hiding under a blanket, waiting for something—probably for Fyn and Kol to stop fighting. They were always at it, but would invariably make up with an overly loud round of lovemaking. So it was actually this Jak was hiding from, the unpleasant sound of Fyn's dubious pleasure.

As a distraction from the shrieking in the other room, Jak had idly indulged in self-exploration. The sensations in that uncharted territory were strange at first, but oddly thrilling. Jak began to rub the spot that tingled, to relieve it, make it die down as one did with an itch, and discovered more of this feeling instead of less. Rubbing the flesh almost raw, Jak at last felt extraordinarily light and heavy at once, the entire surface of Jak's skin exploding in minute bursts of electricity as though pricked all over with delicate pins.