THE ONE
“You can tell me, can’t you?” said Gimble. “There’s something in your face. Something you heard when you went down to the pit. Can’t you tell me?”
They were bed together. Theone loved going to bed with him. She loved to hold his hands and knead the knuckles. She wondered where he was from, but of course he was from here. There was nothing else before here.
“He told me about myself,” Theone said. “We are cousins.”
“Really,” Gimble turned to her, looking genuinely excited, and nothing like a Hand, a Black Star. For not the first time she wondered if she was good for him.
“Yes. And he told me about my mother. About why she came here, and was caught, and eventually escaped with my father. She was here looking for a treasure.”
Gimble’s eyes were wide with wonder.
“Don’t ask me any more. I shouldn’t say any more.” Theone told him. “And, what’s more. I really don’t know much more anyway.”
In the depths Ethan called to her. He said, “Cousin, bring your face to these bars.”
She didn’t even bother to think he might harm her, or he could trick her. She just obeyed. In the semi darkness, this close to him she could see the thinness of his face. She could see his eyes, deep set and greenish. He pressed a long finger to her lips and said, “You’re going to see something. I’m going to show you something. A story.
His finger touched her mind, and it was like soap and oil, a great opening, a flood of pictures and stories, other bodies, other skins, a red headed girl. Maud was her name. A story told to her in the moonlight, the story itself unfolding.
“My love! My love! Come down to me.”
“My love my eye,” Maud taking off her slipper to throw it down at him.
“You really think I’m like Celandine.”
“You are finer by far,” Ethan told her, “than Celandine.”
He leapt up on a rock and held his hand to her. He helped her climb onto the mossy place, and then walked up a little to stand by the river. The stars were so bright they painted the water, and all the trees guarded them.
“Conrad was one of the Kuaelar,” he pointed up at the sky. “ He lived in Kokobeam, that is the realm of the stars, and one night he leaned out of heaven entranced by thr beauty of Coraline, and he fell to earth. I know the story.”
“A lot of stars used to fall out of the sky entranced by beauty.”
They didn’t say anything. This wasn’t the time for saying things. This was the time for kissing and darkness and more darkness. Something about the night took away any inhibition, and Maud lifted her arms and let her nightgown be taken from her. She could have never been naked if there hadn’t been night for cover. She could never have accepted these hot kissed on her breasts, on her nipples, down her belly, down to the center.
Ethan lay on his side letting him undress her. She was surprised by the belt buckles and trouser snaps, the shirt buttons. She had heard that women wore so much more. But then she lived in the woods, and was away from the courts right now. She had come out here in her nightclothes. The warmth and the solidity of his body under the cotton and the silk and the leather that had always encased him surprised her.
“Maud,” his voice came out a little startled moan, and then they joined, legs around legs, needing their bodies to press together, needing to hold more and more of each other, to kiss more and more.
Slowly and tenderly they worked. She felt so open to him. The warm weight of him settled between her, across her, his sighing breath, and then gently they worked at it again before they both caught their breaths at his entrance, at the strangeness of him inside her.
Theone blinked, almost startled to find herself once again in the darkness of the prison.
“Why did you show me that?”
“So that you would know the story.”
“But you showed me…” Theone flushed. “You showed me something personal.”
“I didn’t know if you knew about that. About lovemaking. I thought you should see it, feel it. Test it to what you have with your Gimble. But, chiefly, I simply wanted to share with you.”
Ethan shook his slightly shaggy head.
“I don’t know why. “
“I thought you always knew why,” said Theone.
Ethan smiled softly and then said, “Well, sometimes.
“How did it make you feel?”
It made her feel wet between her legs and hot. It made her aware of Ethan in a way she never had been, and Theone realized that for someone who had been with so many men, was raised to do so, she knew so little of love.
“It made me want to go to Gimble,” she said, honestly.
Ethan laughed.
“Do not make fun of me,” Theone said.
Mercifully, Ethan nodded. He said, only:
“And now your lips are sealed.”
“Wha?” her voice was half there.
“What I am saying to you,” Ethan said, “is that you cannot repeat what I am about to say. You will not be able to. It will escape your lips and then your mind whenever you try. But when you do not, it will come back to you.”
Theone realized her lips were still touched by Ethan, and backed away, upset, but he said, tenderly, “Do not think me cruel. I do this for you. For you and Gimble, whom you love. You will never have to keep secrets from him. There will be no division between you and him.”
“But, I don’t… love…”
“You do love him, though you did not mean to. And he loves you. Ahnar snuck through the cracks and linked you. That’s how it is done.”
Theone did not bother to ask who Ahnar was. She only nodded. Ethan motioned with his finger and called her back, placing a finger on her lips.
“It is said that Moriankomur had three sons. These sons had sons. The third born of the third descended of his third son was Hyram, and he built the Great Tower, the Talmaze. He was going to raise it to the heavens with the help of the Giants. They were going to steal Olea, who is the moon. But Addiwak and Elhehah struck the Giants down and scattered men, confounding their languages. Later Hyrum went north where he built the Temple to Moshudak, Lord of the Pit. To this day that Temple lies in what was the western reach of Daumany, in the city of Enrick Elkanahir, was also called Ensalissa, and it was to this Temple that Dominic the First made sacrifice when he went to destroy the Crystal City and take over the lands of the Royan. We now know that, as tribute to Motunkandi, he brought the Sixteen Stones of Addiwak, and there, in the deepest part of the Temple, they rest to this day. Ever were Motunkandi and the Star Goddess enemies, and nothing pleases the soul of the demon more than to have that Lady’s gifts to her people. When I get out of here, I am going to Enrick Elkanahir to find those jewels, and when I have them, I will return for you. If you would like to leave this house of darkness.”
“The girl,” Theone said.
“Yes?”
“Who you were with?”
“Maud,” said Ethan.
“She was very beautiful.”
“Yes, she is,” Ethan agreed. “You would love her.”
That night when they lay together, Theone told Gimble of her enchantment. He said, “That is good. Apparently whatever he told you is precious to your people.
“I don’t have a people. Just this place. But I can’t imagine how sacred whatever it is, must be.”
Something came to Theone on impulse, which she thought to shut down. And then she said, “But Gimble, I don’t really have much of a people either. So we are each other’s people. See?”
He turned his long white body to her, and when she put her hand to his chest and saw his smile she thought, “He is a Black Star. He is a killer. He should not be smiling like this. I am turning him into something he should not be. I will be his danger.”
But the danger came when the baby died.
There was no reason for it. Theone’s stomach was round and firm and high. She was in excellent health, young and beautiful, as was Gimble, in his way. If she brought forth a son, her life would be changed. Maybe his would be too. On a rare occasion a man left the Black Star, took on a new name. But that did not happen. A firm, whole, dead child came from Theone after a long labor. It was pale and white with black hair like hers and like Gimble’s, and she threw back her head and howled.
But what was worse was that Gimble did too. Outside, in the birthing room, he sat curled up and howling, tears running from his eyes, and then he went to her and held her, and then he left, and that was the last time she saw him, though it was days before she knew that.
“He lost all composure and fell into emotion,” Hyrax said, simply, sitting down beside Theone.
“That is not the mark of the Black Star. Therefore, he is no longer a Black Star.”
In that moment Theone realized that she had actually never known his name, Gimble was simply what he had told her to call him. She held onto this thought for a long time, repeating it over and over again to stave off the succeeding thought. For a Black Star to suddenly no longer be a Black Star was to be nothing.
Gimble was dead.
A fortnight past before she heard tale of a sobbing Woman who had escaped beating and possible death. She was quiet all and finally at the evening meal asked Hyrax would had happened.
“It was the Chryan prisoner,” the beautiful blond woman said.
“Ethan?”
Hyrax frowned as if remembering his name then said, “Yes.”
“Does he need a new attendant?”
“He may,” Hyrax said. “But not here.”
The last of the life she had been making for herself was slipping through her fingers. To hold it a little longer meant not understanding, retarding the mind.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s gone, Theone,” Hyrax said, plainly. “He escaped last night.”
So that was it, Theone thought.
Late that night she woke, the starlight in her small room, and she got up and walked through the great stone house of Women, down to the prison cellar. She looked around where Ethan had been, hoping for some sign of him, hurt more by his loss than she knew. But now she understood. He had not wanted her to be blamed when he escaoed, and as she thought this, she saw what seemed to be a copper thread.
She bent down with her torch and almost as soon as she read the letters, they disappeared.
He had told her some of this Chyran magic. He had even told her of the letters. As they disappeared, letters written for her, she read:
“To the stone beneath the window.”
The little cell was open now, and Theone mounted the torch and then walked in, wondering what she would say if anyone woke and came down at this time of night. She had more freedom than she’d ever had, and was not eager to lose it.
There was, under the now bricked up window, a darker stone than the others.
Why did they brick up the window? She wondered. He hadn’t left through that. She wasn’t sure how he had left, but as she lifted the stone, she knew it had not been that way.
Under the flagstone was a bag of coins, and a heavy cloak, and Theone realized that Ethan had taken so long to leave because he was preparing a way for her. Perhaps he had even stayed her far longer than any Chryan mage needed to because of her. Loss and age had taught her calmness, and she resisted th urge to hurry, liftd what had been left, saw scraps of bread and a note like water that vanished when she read it.
LEAVE THROUGH THE COURTYARDS.
She replaced the flagstone, took up the bundle, and then left the prison and returned to the House of Women, making for the kitchen and canteens for water. There was no time to think. Theone walked out into the courtyard. She went to the great door that she had almost forgotten about, and pushed it open, and so she passed into a greater courtyard, what she thought was the one where the Hands practiced. Arms were discarded and she could hear the sounds of snuffling horses from the stables. In the distance, from one of the rooms of the House of the Hands she heard a Woman being fucked. She passed to the great Gate of the Courtyard and without thinking, she pushed it and was mildly surprised that it opened. She realized she ought to have not been surprised by this Gate, but by first, and now she stood in the open, under the open sky, and there were no walls before her. She was almost terrified, and wanted to press herself flat to the earth, for it had been many years since she’d been under the open sky. It would have been foolish to steal one of their horses. She would be caught immediately. Walking would have to do. For now. Theone pulled the great cloak over her shoulders, caught her breath, clutched the little purse at her side, and started walking.
