They closed in around her, prodding her insistently, urgently, with their webbed fore-flippers. Her mind could not form an image of what they wanted from her; but she knew, with the unquestioning trust of her childhood, that they were the Lady’s own children come to save her if they could. “S-Silky,” chewing the words to pieces between her chattering teeth, “let me — g-go.”
He released her; she sank like a stone beneath the surface. But before she could react, the sleek, buoyant shapes were raising her again. Web-fingered flippers enfolded her like the petals of a closing flower, drawing her up into the air — over onto her stomach on the soft, broad breast of a mer at rest in the water. She lay sputtering and amazed, held barely clear of the lapping surface of the sea, her feet still trailing in its insatiable cold. But the mer — it was a female, she could tell by the necklace of golden fur it wore — wrapped her in its flippers like a nurse ling cub, feeding her its body heat as it would warm and feed its own young one. It began a deep toneless crooning, in rhythm with the rocking of the sea. Too exhausted to wonder, Moon lay her head on its silky breast, hands beneath her, feeling the toneless song penetrate her shuddering body. Silky and two of the other mers still hovered nearby; but she did not remember them now, did not remember anything past or future as her existence telescoped down to the present moment.
How long in the time of the greater world she drifted, held in the mer’s embrace, she never knew, or wanted to know. The sun had crossed the sky, rolling down the farther slope to its own rendezvous with the sea, before another change came over the face of the water: the long shadow of a ship reaching ahead to greet them, the distant heartbeat of its engines breaking their silence more and more insistently.
“Moon. Moon. Moon.” Silky spoke her name, wreathing her neck with dripping tentacles as he tried to make her hear.
But there was no Moon, no moon above, only the sea, the Sea, to answer him… the Sea reclaiming Her own.
“Moon… can you hear me?”
“No—” It was more a protest against the intrusion on her mindless peace than an answer to a demand. The world was a watercolor painting formlessly flowing…
Something jarred her lip against her chattering teeth; hot, viscous liquid spilled into her mouth and trickled down her throat like flaming oil. She whimpered in pleasure and denial, feeling the watercolor world congeal, take on a form that was without reference in her grayed memory — except for the face centering above her, pulling past and present into a single double-image. “MM-Miroe?”
“Yes,” with infinite relief. “She’s coming back to us, Silky. She knows me.” Beyond him she made out Silky crouched patiently, watching, and the round unblinking eye of a cabin porthole.
“W-where?” She gulped the peppery-sweet syrup convulsively as Ngenet pressed the cup to her lips again. Her shivering, shriveled body was bare of the waterlogged suit and bundled in heated blankets.
“On my ship. Hauled in safe on board at last, thank the gods. We’re going home.” He replaced a hot compress across the bridge of her nose, over her cheeks.
“H-home… ?” Past and present lives ran together again.
“To my plantation, to safe harbor. You’ve spent enough time walking the star road, and enough time in the arms of the Sea Mother, mer-child… almost a lifetime.” He brushed her sodden hair back from her forehead with a calloused, gentle hand. “Time to be grateful for solid ground, now.”
“El-Elsie…” The word hurt her throat like bile.
“I know.” Ngenet straightened up from the edge of the bunk. “I know. There’s nothing you can do for her now but rest, and heal.” His voice and the cabin space faded into the unreachable distance.
Moon huddled deeper inside the nest of blankets as her awareness shrank inward, dwindled down to the sensation of hot needles penetrating her cold-deadened flesh, turning ice-locked veins to spring, unbinding her muscles; setting her free…
28
Jerusha left the empty rooms of her townhouse behind, left the bread and fruit of her unwanted evening meal half-eaten on the table, and went out and down into the Maze. The twilight beyond the walls at the alleys’ ends marked the end of one more unbearable day that she had borne, somehow — and the promise of another to be borne tomorrow, and another, and another. Her job had been her life, and now her whole life had become hell. Sleep was her only escape, but sleep only hastened the coming of the new morning. And so she walked, aimlessly, anonymously, through the dwindling crowds, past the shops — half of them empty now, half still clinging tenaciously to life and profit, hanging on until the bitter end.
The bitter end… Why? Why bother? What’s the point? She drew the hood of her coarsely woven striped caftan further forward, shadowing her face, as she turned into the Citron Alley. Midway to twilight was a botanery she frequented: herbal remedies and spices, cluttered shelves full of household saints and charms against ill fortune; all imported from home, from Newhaven. She had gone so far as to buy the most potent amulet she could find and wear it around her neck — she who had sneered at her elders back home for wasting blind faith and good money on superstitious nonsense. That was what this job had driven her to. But the damned charm hadn’t done her any more good than anything else she’d tried in all this tIMe. Nothing had done any good, held any purpose, had any effect.
And now the one person who had supported her, kept her from believing that she was a complete and utter failure, was gone. BZ . Damn you, BZ! How could you do this to me? How could you — die? And so she had come here again, telling herself that she did not know why…
But as she neared the shop she caught sight of a familiar face — a familiar shock of flaming-red hair — Sparks Dawntreader coming toward her, dressed like a sex holo. She had seen him only rarely over the past few years, during her infrequent official visits to the palace.
It surprised her now, seeing him again, to realize that he didn’t look a day older than the first time she had seen him, sprawled in that alley almost five years ago. But then, it had surprised her that Arienrhod kept him (in every sense of the word, she supposed) at the palace… had she kept him young as well?
Her interest became self-interest as their trajectories closed; with guilty preoccupation she assumed that he would see her, assumed that he would recognize her even in this disguise, and read her hidden motives in her restless eyes. She slowed, trying to keep her destination obscure until he passed. Gods, am I skulking like a criminal now?
“Hello, Dawntreader.” Defiantly she acknowledged him first; saw by his start of recognition that he would not have looked at her twice if she hadn’t spoken.
But the expression that showed next was none she would have expected, none that she deserved — a smile that held his flawless youth up like a mirror to show her how painfully she was aging, when every day passed like a year. His eyes were a disturbing echo of the Queen’s: too knowing, too cynical for the face that held them. They moved to the display of god-figures and charms in the botanery window, back to the amulet hanging at her throat. He pulled uneasily at the multiple collars of his skintight shirt; the gesture shouted hostility. “Save your money, Commander PalaThion. Your gods can’t reach you here. All the gods of the Hegemony couldn’t stop what’s happening to you — even if they cared.” A mouthful of gall.
Jerusha fell back a step as the words struck at her like vipers, poisoned with the venom of her own deepest fears. Does he want it? Even him? Why? “Why, Dawntreader? Why you?” whispered.