Bird of Chaos: Book One of the Harpy's Curse (36 page)

I cringe at her turbulence. She is physically strong, emotional feeble. “Get some rest, Demostrate.”

Wine and mead have addled her brain and with half-shut eyes she slurs, “Highness, please.” To my surprise, Demostrate drops to her knees. “I am sorry,” she sobs. “Forgive me. I want to be strategos of your army one day.”

Her genuflection complete, I try to pull her to her knees. “Get up, Demostrate. Go to bed.” She will not stand. Instead, she kisses my toes and washes my feet with her tears. “From the moment I saw you I knew. Please.
Please
,” she cries.

“Reward will be given when the war is won and I am on the throne. In the meantime we must put desire from our minds and fight together.”

Demostrate claws up my body, weeping as she goes. She takes my face in her big hands and though I push her away she forcibly kisses me. Her lips are moist and salty against mine. Her hands are rough through my hair. I duck beneath her arms. “Demostrate, enough,” I say, pushing her away. She falls to the floor, the drink making her unsteady.

“I am sorry. Please forgive me. Please. I must have you. Please. I
love
you.”

For Demostrate, I fear, being with me will mean validation, emancipation; it’s nothing to do with real love or even sex. The thought makes me feel dirty. I call for Ried and ask her to find others to help her take the strategos away. “And would you put a guard on my door?” I say and the red priestess nods.

“I will do it myself.”

As I crawl into my small cot in my windowless room I am haunted by the day. I feel terrible for Demostrate—I know I am the cause of her disgrace—and I discover that grief is self-centred. My sense of mourning is equalled by my sense of shame. It is
me
the rebels blame when they say Chase died for Tibuta. It is
me
they looked at with hollow eyes when they wrapped his corpse and sent it back to the palace. When I cry it is for myself, for my loss of innocence, for the tarnish on my mind, the blood and rust that I will never be able to wash away. Part of me hates Chase for forcing me to see such gore, for making me face my mortality. Part of me hates Demostrate for making me destroy her. Part of me hates the man for making me kill him. Part of me already hates myself for what I am about to do.

Another thought plagues me:
Where is Drayk?
I know his warm, loving touch would push these thoughts from my mind. It would allow me to sink back into ignorant oblivion.
But where is he?
The last time I saw him he was running into the mob with his sword above his head. I have heard nothing since.

I am burning. The thought penetrates my sleep, dragging me through the thick silt of dreams and up to the surface gasping for air. Not a nightmare, but reality: I am burning. I blink awake, pushing my short dark hair out of my face, rubbing my hazel eyes with my fists. The pain is real. It is there, on my chest, biting into me with the intensity of a wobbegong’s teeth clamped around an unsuspecting swimmer’s foot. I blink again, trying to focus my eyes, my attention on my surroundings: the tangle of sheets, my hands held out in front of my face and a warm glow of red light on my chest: the serpent stone. Sitting up, throwing my bedding aside, I clutch the leather thong—my fingers suddenly too large, my actions too clumsy—fumbling to untie the gem before it buries any further into my flesh. The pain makes its way through layer after layer of skin, singeing and bubbling, sniggering as it goes.

Shea’s pain, it burns!

I finally get the knot undone. As I pull the stone off, skin tears away. A loud curse escapes my lips and I sink back into the eiderdown pillows, blinking back tears.

What relief, what glorious relief!

Breathing more steadily now and holding the gem by the leather tie so it dangles in front of my face, I peer into Drayk’s bright light, wondering how such a small pebble could cause so much discomfort. It is like looking into another world. Inside, at its core, is a cyclone in a red sky. A tiny tremor, a ripple across a pond, works its way up the cord. The gem lurches. The red serpent stone expands before my very eyes. Now it swells more quickly, like a womb filling with blood, its membrane thick, glassy and translucent as it stretches. It grows until it is the size of a small child and as heavy too.

There is something inside it: a foetus swimming in amniotic fluid.

I heave it gently onto the marble floor and stand watching it the way a god might stand watching us, his hands on his hips as he leans forwards, peering down his nose, through the clouds, over the tops of the trees to where we plough the fields, play in the icy brooks or sharpen our swords for war.

Still the thing grows. A crack forms. I half expect to see the entire world tumble out and slosh onto the floor. A tendril of smoke seeps through, smelling of blood and sulphur. The wound seeps red.

More cracks appear and the egg hatches. Drayk uncurls from the shattered pieces, naked, his smooth skin covered in sinewy mucous. His skin is sun-kissed and blemished, his hair is flecked with grey, and his eyes are framed with wrinkles and heavy, leaded with memories. His abiogenesis over, he sits in the centre of the egg looking bewildered, blinking with sticky eyelashes, bloody goo dripping from his long hair. Like a foal he tries to stand on legs that seem too long. He slips and falls before trying again and then giving up.

Like the gods I am both delighted and appalled at this creation. I reach out, my hand hovering but not quite touching. Awestruck, I mumble something nonsensical about him having had a safe journey to which he does not respond.

“I thought I had lost you,” I say but he makes no reply.

Suddenly remembering my dedication to my offspring—remember, I am the god—I spring up, cross the room to find a discarded himation, which I wrap around his shoulders. I am oblivious to his nakedness, which has become sterile, his genitals no more interesting than a foot or an elbow. I fetch a bowl of cold water from a red priestess and place it carefully by his side, not wanting to frighten him. If he is the foal then I am the mother licking her disoriented and helpless newborn; I brusquely clean his arms, his legs and his torso with the rough himation.

“Th…thank you,” he mutters, following each of my movements with the attentiveness of a child. Then, when I have finished, “Who…who are you? Where am I?”

Panic flickers in my belly
.
I try to keep my voice level because, like a child, he is searching my face for an indication of how to respond. “I am Verne Golding the Third. You are in my bedroom in the Sanctuary of the First Mother in Tibuta. You are Drayk the immortal and you just regenerated. You are in your thirty-fourth year of this life and will live to forty before being reborn a child. This is your twenty-fifth life and you have been living for some thousand years. You are the wisest and—” my voice catches “—humanity’s most loyal advocate and my…my friend.” I say “friend” because I do not want to startle this stranger by admitting we are lovers. “I have never seen you regenerate before so I don’t know what to do. You told me you would remember me.”

Frowning, he searches my face for a clue, something to indicate that we have met before, then he looks around, focusing his grey-blue eyes on the rough stone walls, my simple cot, my weapons piled in the corner where Ried left them after reclaiming them from Demostrate.

“Verne?” he says, trying out the sound.

“Yes,” I say, biting my lip to keep back the pitiful ointment of my eyes. I hold out my hands and pull him to his feet. His skin is hot to touch and yet he shivers. He stands a foot taller than me but, nude, he is hardly intimidating. His manhood is not manly when it is shrivelled and shy. His thighs and bottom are stark white in contrast with the rest of him and, hunched the way he is, he looks as if a breath of wind would topple him. I could laugh but I hold my tongue. Instead, I enclose his narrow waist in my arm and walk him to the edge of the bed, encouraging him to sit.

He shakes his head. “I am sorry. I do not know you.”

If Drayk does not know me then do I cease to exist?

This line of thought gets me thinking: if I could rewrite our history what would I change? The answer is nothing. I would change none of my memories of Drayk. Love, then, is the absence of regret. It is the knowledge that you have not compromised so much of yourself that you have become the ‘other’. It is the simultaneous sacrifice and preservation of self. It is a balance. Love is encouraging the other to fulfil himself. It is being allowed, nay demanding that you be allowed to fulfil yourself. It is a collective flourishing. Love is not a warm fuzzy feeling, not lustful desire—though this is important too—not gifts or armies delivered at your door, but contentment, a complete lack of resentment. I am on the brink of an epiphany, the realisation that—it comes to me slowly, painfully—there is a higher love. I feel a higher love for Drayk. I can love
only
Drayk. But Drayk has forgotten me and I fear he may never remember.

My epiphany has distracted me from my responsibilities to care for my lover and he sits on the edge of my bed choking. He coughs once, twice, then on the third time he breaks into uncontrollable spluttering and gasping. He gropes at his neck. “Help…I cannot…breathe.”

Yanked from a place of calm reflection, I crawl across the bed, kneel beside him and pound his back. Alarmed, my body rings out like a bell:
Help! Help! Help!
My actions are frantic. I thump him with a closed fist. Again. Again. Again.
There is a higher love.

His eyes water. His face turns red.

Again I am the mother. I pry open his mouth and try to see what is blocking his airway. Into his gullet I grope, feeling his warm and wet tongue, his tonsils and his teeth. He pushes me aside, doubles over and heaves. He heaves again, his big, rough hands squeezing his knees, his face straining, revealing veins running up and down his neck.

His final effort sends a projectile across the room. We watch it clatter over the stone then come to rest. I get to it first, bend over and pick it up. Drayk’s serpent stone is covered in saliva. It gently hums and at its centre a small universe unwittingly spins.

“Thank the tides that’s over,” Drayk croaks, coming to peer over my shoulder. He turns me around and in his eyes I see our shared stories.

“Drayk,” I whisper.

He takes my hand. “Verne,” he sighs. “I am so sorry I forgot you. I was killed and the stone…I was stuck between this world and the next. It happens sometimes when my death has been particularly violent.”

I exhale with relief and throw my arms around his neck, filled with an exhilarating need to give him everything: my heart, my obedience, even my atrama.

He lifts me in his arms and holds me. Whether he is aware of the change in me I cannot be sure but I hug him tight, hoping my gesture conveys me true feelings: I have found a higher love.

There is desperation in the way he clings to me. After placing me gently on the ground he presses his lips against mine and I am glad to be reacquainted with his tongue, his warmth and the smell of him. He wraps his arms around my head and holds me to him. “The gods forgive me,” he mumbles.

“It seems so unfair,” I say.

Neither of us dares speak of the agony we face: mine when he reaches his fortieth year and is reborn—I will live for twenty years waiting for him to grow up and find me again—and his when he must face eternity without me. To speak of the future will destroy what little time we have.

He takes my hand in devotion and guides me back to the bed. We are two pilgrims walking down this holy path, our lips longing to come together in prayer.

“What happened?” I say. Then, more quietly, “How did you die?”

He runs his hands over his face. “When we were on the Seawall I lost sight of you after you left the cage. All around was the clanging of swords.” He looks at me with meaning. “They were armed, Verne. They were far more skilled than any slave, trained by the high priestess, I believe. They matched us blow for blow.”

“They have been receiving weapons from Whyte.”

“That explains it.” He pulls back the covers and I crawl into bed. “Like cattle they came, one after the other, and all we could hear was the sinister slicing of swords through youthful flesh, rattling bones, chattering teeth, then later the rapid retreat as Icelos descended upon us.”

I envisage Icelos, goddess of death, her arms outstretched and her black cloak like wings. She hovers above the battle, a vulture ready to pick at their bones.

“I was certain we would all die, every last one of us: Tibutan soldiers, incensed citizens, Shark’s Teeth, everyone.”

A shrill voice reverberates around my skull, Icelos’s demented scream, and cracking bones and splintering shields as clubs connect with Tibutan hearts. I hear Chase. I see the man I have killed. I try to push both from my mind.

“I fought a Shark’s Tooth, a boy of eight, a woman in rags, another man and another.” He grips my hand. His eyes are wide as he remembers. “In their eyes I saw the gleam of hope, a love of Tibuta so strong it was intoxicating. I did not want to kill them. No, I wanted to lay down my weapons and join them, commiserate in the tragedy of human nature. It destroys me, killing so many innocent people.” He turns away to hide his damp cheeks. “I wanted to weep for humanity as we knelt by Tibuta’s deathbed, but they made me fight, attacking when I would have retreated, forcing me to defend myself, to bore down on them when I wanted to run. I was possessed with lust for survival and I chopped through them like a deranged demon. The last boy, I drew a line from his groin to his chin.” He shudders, staring at his hands as if they still clasped his sword, the far wall, anywhere but my judging eyes.

“A shofar sounded above us and for a moment we paused, looking towards the source of that glorious sound, hoping beyond all hope that the battle was over. But it was the Whyte soldiers. They descended in the cages or rappelled from the top of the Seawall.” Drayk pauses and holds his head in his hands. “They were merciless. They had no reason to hold back. They slashed and carved their way through the mob, thirsting for blood, for another notch in their belt to brag about, a number to compare with their comrades. And the five orca, they were hungry.”

I picture a field of poppies. Orca sniff and paw the earth. They use their bare hands to rip the plants out by the roots, to snap the flower’s stems, to grind the red petals into the ground.

“Some of the Whyte hoplites carried clubs.”

I imagined the grey, moist knowledge leaking from the soldiers’ broken skulls.
What a waste
, I think, and I too want to weep.

Drayk looks away. “I suddenly found myself surrounded by the orca. They could not distinguish friend from foe and wanted nothing but to satiate their bloodlust.” He falls quiet, eyes glazed over as he remembers.

“And you were killed?”

“Yes, they killed me,” he says, running his hand over the spot on his neck where their fangs pierced the skin. “I was exhausted. Though I knew I would regenerate, I fought. It is part of being human. We are afraid of dying so we fight regardless of whether it will help or not. I sliced them down, one after the other, but my blade did nothing. It was like hitting leather.”

I say nothing.

“One latched onto my back with his claws. Another took my arm. The third and fourth my legs. The fifth dragged me to my knees. I fought as best I could but the beasts were there to kill.” Drayk shudders and I recognise real fear in his eyes. “One bit my shoulder then ripped out half my neck while the other one started on my face. The pain was…Pain is an interesting thing.” His tone changes as he addresses his fate with the detachment of a surgeon. “The body has a way of blocking it out. It shuts down the senses so, as you die, you see only ghostly forms and hear things as if from a distance. As I died I heard the snarling of orca feasting on my flesh. I was thankful when it was over.”

I hold my hands to my mouth. “Drayk, that is terrible.”

“I have little recollection of my time regenerating, only the sensation of falling, of clouds whizzing past my head, of warm liquid on my skin, red light like when you look directly at the sun with your eyes shut. And then I woke up here.”