[Memory] Deep Waters

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

M
ovement, behind him. The candles in the kitchen were beyond guttering, and the stove only cast a soft glow; the little room was covered in warm shadows. Tom had smiled at Aremu when he’d said I’ll come, and he hadn’t looked back to make sure. He hadn’t looked at Aremu at all on the way to the kitchen, not when he’d taken the poker from its place, not when he’d knelt by the belly of the old iron thing to shuffle at the glowing embers; not when he’d taken a few more dry sticks from the pile and thrown them in.

He could feel him there, anyway. He didn’t need to look at him to remember the shape of him, slight and well-muscled and covered in silvery scars, padding through the candlelit dark. He could almost imagine, sometimes, what it’d be like if he had a field, though he felt guilty as ever for the thought, and never really let himself think it. It was there, nevertheless; it was there in the way the rustle and breeze behind him — Aremu taking back his sweater and trousers and pulling them on — Aremu moving, silent, to the window — made the hairs on his back prickle, all the way down his spine.

He did look at him, once, crouched by the stove. When he spoke. Tom’s braid was coming frayed; he looked aside, through stray tangled black hairs. He felt the heat of the stove on one side of his face, making the sweat prickle and bead on the skin of his neck. He felt the chill on the other.

He couldn’t make out anything about the imbala’s face, but he saw two of him: the one that stood in his kitchen, and another, darker and hazier, that faced him in the glass. The image clouded, cleared, clouded again.

Tom grunted as he got to his feet, rolling his shoulders again. After the heat of the open stove, the chill of the kitchen was almost a relief. He moved to a cabinet and leaned against it, and found himself mirroring Aremu’s body language: arms crossed, hands tucked in underneath.

He smiled. “I never heard of the stars movin’,” he said, and there wasn’t an ounce of a joke in his voice. “Maybe so; maybe that's how we look, from behind the weave. It’s funny, how everythin’ moves, except when you look straight at it, an’ then it’s still, for a —”

He broke off, glancing away thoughtfully and shifting to scratch at his forearm underneath his sleeve. He looked down at the hardwood, then looked up and found Aremu looking at him. His smile faded, just a little.

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment, “bein’ honest” — and he sucked at a tooth, and started rolling up his sleeves. He took the kettle from off the counter behind him and set it on top of the stove. “Go into it hopin’ for one thing, an’ end wi’ another. I ain’t never got what I expected, but I reckon that’s half the point.” As he moved back to the cabinet, he grinned at Aremu; then, he knelt to open it up, hinges creaking, and shuffle round in the dark.

It was a few moments before he found what he wanted. He took out another metal tin, almost indistinguishable from the other one that sat on the counter now — mint-smelling and dusted with fine little leaves. This one, as he took off the lid, gave off a deep, rich, earthy scent with an oddly sweet twist that was hard to place. Tom looked down into it, at the thick powder; it was beetroot-russet in the dimness, and he knew what color it’d be steeped.

He took out another couple of cups, then paused, like he’d forgot something. The one candle in the kitchen still lit was a drizzly little stub; wetting his fingertip and thumb, Tom pinched it out. He found another, higher, nearer the window, and went to it a misshapen matchbox off the counter nearby. It took his path near to Aremu, and as he lit the match, he looked over at the other man.

“We ain’t talked about it so much,” he said more softly. “What’ve you done before? You ain’t got to say, neither, but…”

There was a pause as he got the candle lit. He stood there in its soft glow for a moment, silent, then reached to brush Aremu’s arm with his hand. “You want to stop, any time,” he added, and smiled. “One thin’ ain’t like another, oes? I know I take it well enough, but there’s some shit jus’ makes me moony. So — any time, boemo, jus’ say the word.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

They move, Aremu wanted to say. He knew Tom believed him already; he didn’t doubt that. But a sort of longing welled up in him, to tell Tom that he’d spent nights watching them – that if you were still and patient and silent and sleepless, that if you lay yourself out open and empty on a flat roof, or a stretch of desert, or the deck of an airship, that if you watched and waited and held the sights above you fixed in your mind like a map, you could see it.

It was slow, their movement, impossibly slow; as if the stars lived on some scale of time Aremu could not imagine, some of them drawn slowly across the sky, steady and inexorable – others fixed in place, or else moving so slowly that even his practiced eye, night after night, couldn’t find the change. Year after year, Aremu thought. Tom was leaning against the cabinet now, his arms crossed over his chest, watching him, his face two glittering eyes over a mass of shadows, with only the faintest texture of his beard left visible.

I went to a lecture, once, on the stars, Aremu wanted to say. I wasn’t meant to be there, and I didn’t understand half of it, but they had photographs – I don’t know how – but the professor projected them on the wall – you could see some of them, up close, and distant sweeping light, as if the sky itself was made of clouds. I wanted to – I wished –

Aremu nodded his understanding at Tom’s grin. “There’s much to be said for yielding,” he said, very softly, so soft that he wasn’t sure if the other man heard him at all. Tom had rolled up his sleeves, set the kettle out – busied himself with a little tin, with a candle. He wandered an easy path through the kitchen, and Aremu couldn’t help imagining what sort of constellation it would make, if he drew the lines together.

Tom lit the match with a soft hiss, and a sharp prick of light blossomed over his beard, against the skin of his face. Aremu watched him bring it to the candle – watched the light against his bare forearm as he reached out.

“I’ve – ” Aremu cleared his throat; his arms uncrossed, reflexively, and he stilled the urge to reach for Tom’s hand. He thought better of thinking better, but still didn’t quite know what to do. His fingertips lingered on the back of Tom’s hand, hesitant; his thumb swept a broad path over the other man’s skin.

A week ago, and he had been sitting in the kitchen of the Eqe Aqawe – the end of a night that had been too long for its own good – shivering slightly into a cup of kofi – Uzoji looking more drained than Aremu would have liked at the far end of the table, Niccolette intently cooking flatbreads she called ‘crepes’ and refused any other name for, counting the seconds under her breath before flipping them over, Chibugo talking to fill the silence.

“ – chan,” Chibugo had said, and it had crept out at Aremu from amidst the rush of noise, and he had looked up at the other man.

Chibugo had seen his look perhaps, and grinned. “Light-hearted stuff,” he’d said, cheerfully. “A cup, brewed, will relax your troubles away and send the world into glimmers of light. Now, eyo’pili, that’s – ”

And if it’s concentrated? The words had left Aremu’s mouth before he’d thought better of them. Chibugo had stopped; he’d felt Uzoji’s gaze on him, light and curious, before his friend of two decades had looked away with the faintest of smiles.

“Never tried it,” Chibugo had said, cheerfully.

Aremu smiled, faintly, at Tom. “I’ve had – we call it qinnab,” he said. “Ganja, I think, here. Mostly when I was younger,” there was something sheepish in his smile, now, moments stolen from studying to drift in a haze of pleasant smoke, to waft away the world. “There’s – um – dzos’ayo, it’s… popular in the desert. They say it… makes you meet your soul,” something twisted on his face, and Aremu cleared his throat again, and shrugged. “Made me sick,” he said, quietly.

“And – uh… eyo’pili,” Aremu said, frowning a little now, studying the flickering candle flame. He looked back up at Tom, and tried his best to find a smile again. “Grows on the Islands,” he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, crossed his arms over his chest again. “That was nice,” he said, and smiled a little more. “Made me feel like I was flying.”

“If I want to stop,” Aremu said, softly, the smile flickering on his face and fading, pinched out like a candleflame, “I’ll tell you. I trust you, Tom." He didn't know if he would be believed, but he offered the truth as if cupped in his hands, and longed for something he didn't dare name.

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

T
here was something about that sheepish smile Tom wanted to treasure. He tried to picture it, when I was younger, and he couldn’t; it was a stark reminder how much of Aremu’s life was a mystery to him. He’d told him about Thul Ka the night they met, and Tom’d seen enough of the Eqe Aqawe with each precarious climb, but Aremu Ediwo hadn’t been born to the skies. He tried to picture a young man, a young imbala – whatever that meant for him – in a drift of ganja smoke somewhere in Thul Ka – somewhere, he tried to picture – and nothing took shape. Nothing, or too many things for any of them to make sense.

Qinnab – he held onto the word, put it away somewhere. Hama’d never referred to it that way, but hama had a lot of words Aremu didn’t; hama had spoke words, Manatse words, steppe words. And he’d been most of his life in the harbor, anyway. The words were important, Tom thought: qinnab was a different sort of thing from ganja; things weren’t the same by different names, though he couldn’t’ve said why. Names on the map.

He’d learn, he thought, shaking the match to a dead tendril of smoke. The thought might’ve been mung, but it took root and warmed him inside. He turned and again leaned back against the counter, the wood creaking quietly under his hands, gentle though they were. He watched Aremu evenly through the flickering dark, as intent as he’d been when Aremu’d spoken of the night sky’s tapestry.

And then, another nameless landmark, dzos’ayo: his lips twisted; his brow made a little furrow; he cleared his throat, like he’d swallowed something laoso bitter, and Tom knew what Aremu clearing his throat usually meant, though he couldn’t’ve put it into words. Something about meeting your soul, Tom thought, a familiar discomfort worming its way unbidden into his brain. He felt that curiosity, again, that guilt – also familiar. But then he thought, bad trip; that’ll do it, he thought. That’ll do it, and he didn’t let any of his curiosity show, though he kept watching the imbala.

Then, he met Aremu’s smile with one of his own. He felt his face break into a grin, a little wry, a little wistful. Flying, he half-wanted to say, must feel a hell of a lot different for you than it does for me. But he liked that about Aremu, and he tried, very hard, to imagine a flying dream that wasn’t a nightmare.

He took Aremu’s trust, and the brush of his thumb across the back of his hand, wordlessly. His smile didn’t go out like the imbala’s, but it softened, and he looked the other man in the eye for one more moment – just one, lingering, ’cause he didn’t have the words to say what I trust you, Tom, meant, his nerves shot from the drink he hadn’t had, the things Aremu’d never said a word about. He knew what those four words meant, and he didn’t hear them very often, and he thought maybe Aremu didn’t say them very often.

He turned away, then, with the kettle starting to hiss on the stove, and padded back to the chan and the cups. He’d long known the ratio – the old, tarnished, powder-dusted spoon in the tin like a compass, the weight familiar in his hand.

(He wondered, standing there, in the silence – the wondering crept in on him from all sides. He’d heard Aremu murmur something, fair soft, after he’d grinned; he hadn’t made out the words, and now they played out in his head, formless and strange. And he wondered, too, if what he’d spoken of stars, and Aremu’s silence after, comfortable, he’d thought, but – I know they move, he wanted to blurt out, even though he hadn’t known, he hadn’t known at all, wondering if that silence meant – if a natt was good for some things and not others, at the end of the day –)

He wanted to say something, to fill the silence that’d been filled with so much he couldn’t name. He thought of dzos’ayo, and his mind shied away from it. He remembered how he’d told Aremu he wouldn’t want to see his soul, wouldn’t want to see the whole of him, and the imbala’d told him not to be afraid; but he couldn’t help the fear, and he didn’t understand any man who could.

But then he thought of flying – of Aremu’s flying, not his – and a smile brushed its way back into his face. The spoon paused. “Tell me about eyo’pili,” he said softly, then added, “if you want.”

A pile of powder plopped into one of the cups, sending up a thin little plume. The plume caught on the candlelight, reddish-purple; Tom breathed in the scent and eased the muscles in his back.

He turned, and for a long time, he eased back against the counter. He didn’t look at Aremu, but if Aremu spoke, he listened close; he tipped his head back and shut his eyes, and he breathed in the mingled scents of chan and the woodstove and the melted tallow, and other, older scents underneath them.

When the teakettle whistled, warbling and shrill, he caught it up quick and graceful. Moving past Aremu with a breath of a breeze, he took it to the cups on the counter. He waited a few moments, as always, ’til the water’d cooled just a pina, then poured one cup and then the other, stirring them. It didn’t take long for the foam to whip up and lay on the surface, and for plumes of steam, lavender-white and pungent and oddly thick, to rise and drift through the tiny kitchen.

Tom’s braid was fair fraying, now. He smiled at Aremu through a drift of loose dark hairs, then reached to offer him a steaming cup.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

If you want, Tom added, softly, at the end of the sentence. Tell me about eyo’pili, if you want. What’ve you done before? You ain’t got to say. We ain’ got to speak of it, or nothin’ at all. D’you want me?

There was a weight there, and the heaviness of it left Aremu breathless for a long moment. He was glad that Tom had turned away – glad that the other man was at the stove, busy, spooning dust into the cups, because he had to close his eyes, then, and breathe through it, for a moment. As if he could bend his knees, and readjust – shift it away from the tender parts, to somewhere strong enough to hold.

Something purple shifted, and steamed up into the air, and Aremu watched it drift away.

“It comes from a vine,” Aremu said, softly. “It grows wrapped around some of the trees of the island – not thick enough to strangle them, but it lives off of them all the same. It blossoms once a year – one day, it’s smooth green, and the next there are enormous yellow blossoms sprouting from it, and the next they’re a deep, rich red, covering the vine – and then they drop off and the wind scatters them, dry like leaves, and it’s left a little smaller against the tree.”

“But eyo’pili is something different,” Aremu came a little closer, and rested against the edge of the table, finding a familiar place. “When you cut the vine, it bleeds sap – heavy yellow beads of it. You can’t cut too deep, or you’ll kill the vine; too shallow, and you won’t get enough. You catch it, the fresh sap, and you drink it – a thumb’s worth, is what they say. It has to be taken fresh; if you hesitate, the opportunity’s lost.”

Aremu watched Tom; in the flickering light, he could see his eyes closed, the slow rise and fall of his chest with each breath. He thought he should shut his eyes as well, that whatever Tom didn’t want to see he should let him not look at in peace, but he couldn’t help wanting to watch him. He stilled the urge to go to him, swallowed it down, and held against the table.

“The taste is awful,” Aremu said with a grin seeping into his voice. He thought of Niccolette, grimacing and gagging, Willie spitting his mouthful into the sand, and Chibugo roaring with laughter; Uzoji hadn’t taken any himself, but he’d watched fondly, smiling. “You swallow it, and you sit and wait a little while. It starts with a tingling in your arms and legs, racing through you. It – there’s a weightlessness to your limbs, and a sensitivity.”

Aremu hesitated, held a moment; he watched Tom, and he kept going. “I found myself – wriggling my feet into the sand,” he said, softly. “I could feel all the grains, each one resting on my skin – holding me down. Not heavy, but grounded, as if without them I would lift up off the beach and soar. Your thoughts – it’s – it’s much the same. There’s so much sand that weighs you down and it’s… you can feel it all, each grain, and judge the weight yourself.”

He shifted, and sighed, softly. It was warmer now, in the kitchen, warm enough that the Mugrobi was very nearly comfortable. The teakettle was starting to rumble, soft and low at first, then higher-pitched.

I’d bring it for you, if I could, Aremu wanted to say. You can’t take it from the islands; if the sap dries, it’s useless. I’d like you to try it. I’d –

The teakettle began to whistle, and Tom took it, and carried it past Aremu to the cups. Aremu watched him pour, waiting, and breathed deep the pungent scent of the thick steam, unhesitatingly. Tom turned, in a few moments more, and extended his hand.

Aremu reached for the cup – and he took it, took enough of it that if Tom let go it wouldn’t fall, but he didn’t pull his hand back from the other man’s. He didn’t think – or if he did, he didn’t let it drag him down. He reached with his other hand, and cupped Tom’s cheek, and brushed the dark damp hairs from it. And then he shifted up with the full length of his body, and kissed the other man. He held there for a moment – their hands cradled together around the cup, his fingers settled into Tom’s warm beard and his thumb on his cheekbone – and he kissed him again, soft and tender, just because he could.

Aremu pulled back then, and took the cup with him when he went, cradling it in both hands to keep it safe. He studied it, carefully, the purple-gray color of it cloudy in the candlelight, and lifted his gaze up to Tom’s, and smiled. He waited, a moment, until it became clear that Tom too was waiting. And then he understood, and Aremu lifted the chan, and took his first drink.

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

B
eing so used to his knowing of the word sap, at first, with his head back and his eyes shut – at first, he pictured blood. A vine clinging to a tree, thriving on its sap; spilling sap of its own. Blood for blood. No hesitation. His lips twitched, quirked in something like a smile. Aremu’s voice went on, steady and soft as ever, and filled, occasionally, with something like remembered wonder.

Tom wondered, himself, if Aremu was looking at him. He couldn’t quite picture the expression on the imbala’s face, but he thought he felt the prickle of his eyes on him. That was well enough — he’d always liked the way Aremu looked at him, even on the first night they’d met, at Sweet Waters. He’d liked guessing what was in those thoughtful dark eyes, and he’d liked knowing for sure even better.

And he wondered, too, letting himself drift on Aremu’s voice, if he’d ever fly with eyo’pili. He didn’t think so; he couldn’t imagine what’d take him to the isles. It was like something from another life.

The kettle whistled, and his grin faded. And as he poured the chan, he wondered if it was the sort of thing he’d want to try. It didn’t sound like flying, to Tom, either, though he didn’t know what it did sound like. Weighed down, he’d said, by each grain of sand, able to feel them all one by one, nerves like the eyes of a hawk. He spent enough time, he thought with an uncomfortable rush of clarity, trying to soften the edges of things, to make the world bearable by making it blurry.

If you hesitate. Tom breathed in the heady steam.

When he reached Aremu his cup, he’d expected the lingering brush of his fingers; he hadn’t expected how long it’d linger, both of them holding on. Then the imbala stepping forward, full of purpose. Tom looked into his eyes as he took his face in his hand, fingertips combing through his beard, the pad of his thumb pressing a little firm on his cheekbone — just before he let his eyes flutter shut. Burning on the backs of his eyelids, the look of Aremu about to climb.

Aremu kissed him, this time. He met him in a press of lips and warm insistent breath. Tom grunted softly with surprise. He leaned into the kiss, like there was something in the lovely landscape of the imbala’s mouth he hadn’t found yet, something precious in his breath, like he had to preserve every fleeting feathery second. More hair slid out of the braid, falling over the imbala’s face; both Tom’s hands were full, but he wanted to touch Aremu, and it was damned frustrating, and he smiled in the half-second between kisses. Then Aremu kissed him again, this time almost delicate, and he let everything else disperse.

Suddenly they were apart, and he forgot to breathe or open his eyes. He’d taken the chan with him; Tom’s hand hung empty in the air, as if to touch something that’d already gone. The whole of him was tingling. He was too sober to feel this alive. He opened his eyes, and in the hazy dimness he could see Aremu across from him, watching him as if waiting for a cue.

After a pregnant pause, the imbala brought the cup to his lips and drank. Like a mirror, without hesitation, Tom followed.

Watered-down, the taste of chan was like a green tea, nutty and bitter, but with an aftertaste like apah, and a twist of something sickly sweet — something just out of reach. The fumes now were thick, and the molasses-bittersweetness was heady enough to cloy the mouth. The taste was overpowering, and the chan was thick and frothy against his lips. But it was familiar and full of promise, and tempered by Aremu’s kiss; and he only lowered his cup when he’d taken a benny deep draught.

Maybe it was Aremu, taking his face in his hand and kissing him so brazen and tender, all at once; maybe it was the whirling steam from the chan. He felt light, like his soul could float right out of him, and he half-turned, away from Aremu. He looked into the dimness of the doorway, then back at the other man. A wash of candlelight, high and strong, lit one side of Aremu’s face; where the light met the shadows, it brought out warm, rich tones against his dark skin. It picked out the he curve of his neck and the flickering line of his collarbone, coming out of the collar of his sweater, and all the fine bones in his hand round the cup of chan.

The hand of Tom's that’d brushed Aremu’s, as if with the memory of what that hand could do, was tangling through his loose braid; it was working out each band of hair, one loop at a time. He smiled. “Braid my hair again?” he asked, once it hung in a loose tangle over one shoulder.

He beckoned with his cup of chan and started back through the shadows, into the cramped little room with the couch and the low table.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

There was an odd taste to the chan - like drinking tea mixed with Gioran, without the warmth of the alcohol. The sweetness of it puckered his mouth, and Aremu wondered how it could be possible to taste so many things at once: bitter and sweet, heavy and foamy.

It was not a pleasant taste, overall, but Aremu didn’t rush through it; he took a deep draught and let it linger on his tongue until he knew the contours of it. He took it inside himself, then, and lowered the cup. Tom was looking at him, all darkness and light, one shadow falling just to the edge of the scar that parted his lips. Aremu’s fingers tingled, and his lips too, and he smiled again.

Tom’s fingers were working through the messy, steam-ravaged braid, teasing it loose. He had known it could not last, Aremu thought; as much as he liked Tom’s hair loose and drifting, he felt an ache somewhere in his chest, and he tasted it bittersweet. Silence fluttered soft between them, lingered, and Aremu watched the soft, easy motions of Tom’s hand, and held the chan between his own. The room was still full of steam, light and clinging, the soft candlelight with a purple edge, a shade of unreality to the world, like something from a vision.

And then Tom smiled, and asked Aremu if he would braid it again. And Aremu smiled too, a mirror image of the other man that rose from his chest and crested through him, and he nodded. He followed Tom to the couch; he set the cup down, and let the other man settle again at his legs. He ran his fingers through damp hair. The tangles did not resist so much this time, but Aremu took his time winding through them all the same. The world was growing soft at the edges, but he couldn’t have said why.

Finally, when he was ready, Aremu found the pattern with his fingers and held it, slow and steady, each motion delicate and precise. He watched it take shape beneath his hands, and only with the edges of his mind did he understand it for something he did; it seemed as if the braid sprung up beneath his fingers all on its own. It was as if the shape had always been there, and all Aremu had done was to call to it, to whisper, gently, and coax it into life.

He had thought the room dark, when he came from the kitchen. When he looked up from Tom’s hair, Aremu knew it was not so. The touch of the damp, silky strands lingered on his fingers, as if they had settled into his scars and found a home. And all the lights were glowing; there was the faintest purple haze, drifting out from the kitchen and filtering through them, casting them in shadows - reaching with drifting tendrils towards Tom and Aremu both. Not frightening, he thought, but loving; as if the steam missed them, and wished to envelop them both.

He was still watching the light when he felt Tom ease himself onto the creaking couch, and it was the easiest thing in the world to wrap his hand in the other man’s - to turn, and bury himself in Tom once more, to find a different pattern to follow, briefly, but one no less loving.

Aremu’s breath came a little hard, when he pulled away, and he shivered, and curled his head on Tom’s shoulder. There was no need for an invitation, not with the faint purple aura wrapped around them both, glowing light over Tom and dark over him, but holding them together. Fragile, Aremu knew, and he couldn’t know if it was that very fragility that made it so lovely.

Greedily, he pressed his lips to the other man’s skin once more, not wanting anything but the soft hitch of Tom’s breath, the feeling of the other man’s body shifting beside him. He felt that he could have risen, then, without any effort, but he stilled himself instead, and sighed, soft and contented.

The light wove itself into shapes on the wall, drawn by flickering flames, and Aremu watched them, and it was easy to smile. Comfortable, and ready to go deeper, he took another sip of the chan. The taste was no less strange, but he knew what to expect. Familiarity was no bulwark against discomfort, but it eased the sting of it all the same.

“In the desert,” Aremu said, softly, “sometimes you can see swathes of light holding the stars together.” He had set the chan down, and his hand, lingering warm from the cup, crept beneath the hem of Tom’s sweater and traced patterns over the tender skin beneath. ”As if they’re so many and so thick that you can’t pick them out one by one. The faintest light from below and they’re lost,” he swallowed, softly, and curled a little closer into Tom.

“When I can’t sleep, I watch them,” Aremu whispered, and it was so much easier than he had expected. “I have ever since I was a boy.” His eyes fluttered shut for a moment, against words that felt like they would sting; they did not. “When... when I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts, I watch them - I let them fill me instead, with their lights.”

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

S
itting at Aremu’s feet, he could feel the brush of his knees at his back, the tangle of his long fingers in his hair. He closed his eyes again just to breathe in the scent of chan, imagine the braid taking shape. His headache was easing; he felt that mix of anxiety and pleasure that came with waiting for the chan, knowing it was just round the corner, knowing it’d settle on him before he was half ready for it. He took pleasure in yielding: to Aremu’s graceful, expert hands; to the chan in his lap.

He drank much of his cup while Aremu braided his hair. He found himself humming, too, without knowing when he’d started. The dark was as soft as velvet.

When he’d finished, he set the dregs of his chan down on the table and crawled creaking back onto the couch. He settled against Aremu, and felt Aremu settling into him, finding his hand and holding it. They were like that for awhile, or a short time, or — Tom couldn’t tell; all he knew was the rise and fall of Aremu’s breath against him, and the warmth of him, and the way the curling steam from the chan seemed to blur the space between them.

If Aremu let him, he wouldn’t just hold his hand; he’d turn it over, and run his fingertips along the bones and veins, and trace the shapes of scars long and narrow and short and glistening. Seemed to him he could see — or feel — the pattern of the braid he’d woven written into his fingers, into the lines that crossed his palms and marked his joints. Like the shadow of it was still there. What other shadows? he wondered. With his fingertip he followed the head line, then life at the fork down to fate, then gently touched the hum of his pulse at his wrist. He felt the pulse wash over him, and he smiled. He thought he could feel the life of him in the air around them; he thought the lines carried the life to him, that they must’ve been sharing…

He lost the train of thought. That was fine, cause Aremu’s lips were against his neck, then, and he was laughing softly, at nothing in particular; the warm tickle of his breath was pleasant beyond words. He let his hand go, and just held him.

After awhile, Aremu was speaking — a soft outpour of words, warming the air between them. The shape of him curled in closer, and Tom found himself running his fingers over his scalp, bending to lay a kiss in his hair. He looked out across the little room, and in the dark, it seemed bigger than itself. There was still a candle burning low; he thought it might’ve been a single star, like an eye, and the dark might’ve stretched on forever, like the night sky.

His breath caught against Aremu at the faintest light and they’re lost, because he knew it for true — he’d never been free of the weight of the Rose’s lights bearing down on him. The night sky he knew — the dark, it didn’t stretch on forever; beyond the clouds, there were stars, and stars, and stars, crowded so close, Aremu’d said, that they blurred into each other. Whatever was up there, whatever was all around Vita, hummed and sang so loud to be just out of earshot. He’d never even seen a picture of a desert, or the sky above it; Caina’d had a book, but —

He could feel imbala’s other hand creeping up underneath his sweater, and his warm fingertips danced over the skin underneath. A little shiver passed through Tom, and he nestled closer. When I was a boy, he said, and finally Tom could picture it, Aremu as a lad, but only against a tapestry of stars: if he knew nothing else on the map, he could place Aremu among them.

They move, he remembered. “D’you – learn to recognize them?” he breathed after a few moments, resting his cheek on Aremu’s head. “Like – places on a map?” Aremu’s fingertips traced more lines on his skin; he could feel their trails, humming with life.

He thought he could’ve started humming, then; he thought if he found the rhythm of the lines, he could’ve heard it, and he could’ve sung it himself, with what Aremu’s fingers gave him. He let out a deep sigh against the imbala, tracing his fingers again through his soft short hair. “I never much looked at the sky, when I was a lad,” he whispered. Glimpsed between close-set rooftops, slivers of cloud and dark. “Only the Mahogany.” His mind darted round Marleigh, scared to settle too close to some of the valleys and wells of his boyhood — the chan wouldn’t let him, anyway; the deep earthy bittersweet smell held him from it.

“When I don’t want to be alone wi’ my head,” he said softly, “I…” The words caught, sticky, in his throat; he wanted them to come out, but he couldn’t make them. “I want to be full of stars,” he murmured, almost too low to hear, and kissed Aremu again.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

Tom had taken his hand in his; he traced the contours of it, found his way along the lines that ran from Aremu’s knuckles down to his wrist, teased the edges of scars small and large with his touch. Tom found the seams that wove across his palm, and guided himself along them, and left featherlight heat in his wake. Aremu felt as if his entire self was concentrated in that palm, for just a moment; as if Tom, through it, had reached the heart of him, and set his fingertips on Aremu’s beating pulse.

And at the brush of Aremu’s lips against his neck – Aremu could feel Tom’s pulse beneath his kiss, and his own against Tom’s fingertips at his wrist; for a moment – for a moment – and then Tom laughed, and Aremu laughed too, a warm swell rising through him, buoying him up, light, tangling them together in a rush of noise and feeling.

He felt Tom stir against him when he spoke, the brush of his lips and his breath. He stroked his fingertips along the soft thick hair that lay over Tom’s stomach, and found without needing to look at line of familiar stars, and Tom ran his fingers through the close-cropped hair on his head, and Aremu imagined the hair clinging to his fingers, reshaping itself.

Aremu took another sip of the chan; Tom had nearly finished his cup, but he did not rush. Perhaps there was only one right way, and perhaps he should have downed the entire thing, but he was already drifting, pleasant and easy, and he thought this a pleasant place to be. He wanted to prolong it, to stretch it out and make it home, as if it could always be like this.

“Yes,” Aremu whispered. “By their shapes and their colors.” Places on a map; a map of the stars in his head. He closed his eyes, and it glowed against his eyelids, and he wondered what his own outline would be in the stars. A drifting thread, he thought, and he could take the ache and set it aside, blurred and soft at the edges, and leave only the truth behind. Curled up with Tom – settled on top of him – resting on the weave.

I made my own map for them, he wanted to say, but Tom began to speak, then, and he lost the trace of his thoughts, and let the other man’s take their place. He listened, curled so close that he could feel the other man’s heart beating through him, against his hand and his chest. It was hard to imagine Tom as a boy; he couldn’t picture him any smaller than he was. A little Tom – bare-faced, scrawny with growing – Aremu tried to imagine him on the dock, maybe, like the other boy’s he’d seen in the Rose. He couldn’t see, not quite, how one of them would grow to Tom; he didn’t know.

Another sip of chan, the taste ever more familiar. It wasn’t unpleasant anymore, somehow; it simply was. These are my flavors, it said without words; take me as I am.

Aremu reached out and held him when Tom faltered and changed course; he felt the shift like a current of air, but it didn’t disturb him. There was no lack, in this moment; not in Tom, not in him, not between them. They simply were, together, with the earthy taste of the chan beneath and the drifting lavender clouds above. There were no words so soft he couldn’t hear them; he imagined even their thoughts tangling together, spreading out from them like smoke, wafting into the air.

Tom was kissing him, again, and Aremu caught them and sent them wafting back, and found the other man’s lips with his, and tasted the chan on his lips.

“Stars or waves,” Aremu whispered, softly, into Tom’s breath. “It doesn’t matter where you find the pattern.” He stroked the other man’s cheek, gently, and kissed him again, and he could almost believe it himself, that it was the similarities that mattered, more than the differences. In that moment, in those words, it was true; in that moment, in those words, it was enough.

“You can try it with the candle light, if you’d like,” Aremu offered, softly, and he traced a constellation of kisses across Tom’s cheek, to the edges of his ear, just a few strands of loose hair draped across it. “Just look, and don’t think about anything else. The wanting is enough,” he traced his lips down the curve of Tom’s ear, and settled his cheek on his shoulder once more; he closed his eyes, and the candleflames shone purple through the lids, spreading slowly through him.

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

W
as the wanting ever enough?

Tom wanted to believe it was; maybe if he wanted to believe, then that want was enough for the rest. The line of Aremu’s kisses glowed against his cheek, around the curve of his ear. He still felt the lines where his fingers had traced across his stomach, criss-crossed and weaving round and under the hair, woven of gold – dancing to a design only they knew. He felt all the gold across his skin, and he knew – it dawned on him – that it was real; that lovers’ touches left marks sure as scars.

His breath came fast for a few moments, hitching. He felt Aremu’s cheek on his shoulder, and his heart quickened. He could still feel the lines on his skin, and he knew they were there, and he realized they’d be there forever; in a dazzling rush – it shot through him like lightning, tingling with panic – he realized he’d be traced with gold forever, like a plot etched into the floor of… etched into the…

His breath hitched, then slowed. He heard the pounding of his heart in his ears, his pulse rushing like a flood in a seashell. But that was easing off, too, and he couldn’t quite remember why he’d been panicked. He felt like he was floating out of his body; he reminded himself that the golden weave was what kept him in place, and he knew that without Aremu’s touch, he’d drift off into the endless dark. He felt like a man embarking on a long journey.

You know them – like a map – by their shapes and their colors, Tom remembered he’d said. Aremu’s voice echoed in his head, and suddenly he was smiling; over Aremu’s scalp he brushed lips that were still gold from his kiss, and he laughed again, soft, tender-like. “Mujo ma,” he murmured, and waited awhile, ’cause he was loath to give anything other than the imbala his attention.

But he remembered, too, what’d led them down this path. His heart swelled with it, and he wanted to kiss Aremu again, but he couldn’t, because if he did, he’d never stop. How macha he’d understood – how he’d let him tilt away from what he couldn’t say, but heard it anyway, like their souls was tangled together. Maybe they were. This time, the thought didn’t make his skin crawl, or his neck prickle; he didn’t know why it ever had. He wanted to know what’d made Aremu ashamed of something so beautiful.

Slowly, he shifted in his seat, pushed himself up. He didn’t displace Aremu’s head more than a little – and for what he did displace, he asked forgiveness by reaching for the imbala’s hand and tangling their fingers. It hummed, thrummed between them.

Stars or waves. It felt useful to learn, this looking, this don’t-think-about-anything-else, this wanting. It was a gift, and one he’d need to take with him. He thought he could see the pattern in Aremu – he could see the pattern benny in the glittering threads between them – but he wanted to try to see it in something else.

Drawing his legs up underneath him, he gave his full attention to the candle that burned low on the table. The wax, first, picked out in flickering light, then the flame itself.

He tried to focus his eyes on it, but it danced out of reach; he couldn’t define its shape, couldn’t even give it a color. He’d thought it was orange, at first, but then he saw the pale yellow, edged at the bottom with the faintest blue. He didn’t think about it, then; he just watched, and he traced the leaping outline of it with his eyes. It was like a pulse, though erratic, and Tom felt his thoughts slide down underneath it, melting like wax.

For what seemed a long time, he didn’t think of anything. If he itched for something to drink, it was far enough from his mind that it didn’t trouble him; and he felt Aremu beside him, both of them traced and tied in shimmering lines, but it was a comfortable sort of feeling, and it eased his nerves and helped him focus rather than distracted him.

He shut his eyes, and the flame bloomed dark and scattered into a map of colors. Like a sky in the desert, he imagined, thronged with stars. “Which stars d’you fix yourself on?” he asked, and his voice seemed terribly loud to him in the silence, though he knew he’d spoken soft. “To find your way,” he added, squeezing Aremu’s hand, leaning into him again, “to – to fill you with light. How’re they shaped?”

His thumb brushed Aremu’s glowing pulse, and the memory of the candle thrummed with it against his eyelids. He nestled in close with the imbala again, still watching the flame in his mind. The taste of chan sat bitter at the back of his tongue; he welcomed it. Much to be said for yielding, he thought, and smiled faintly.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

There was a drifting and scattering of time between them. With his eyes still closed, Aremu watched the moments float light-limned through the air, like fireflies, glowing pale lavender. Tom’s laugh was still warm in his chest, warm in the air all around them, lingering and soft.

Tom shifted against him, and tangled his fingers into Aremu’s, and the imbala stirred, and opened his eyes. He felt Tom squeeze his hand, felt it pulse all through him; he reached for the chan, and took the last mouthful of it, and set the empty cup back down; his head tilted back onto Tom’s shoulder, and the thoughts drained from it like liquid, light and frothy. He could see Tom’s gaze traced yellow-orange in the air, candleflame dancing in the darkness of his eyes.

For a moment, Tom was a tree in the earth of the Rose, roots sprawling deep, stretching and spreading beneath the ground – reaching – his trunk and branches spreading up and out, filling the house – his leaves the garden, Ishma’s clever callused hands, the notes of an oud, the smell of lavender – lavender smoke, filling the air, staining his skin, all Tom, all through –

And Aremu was wrapped around him; not crushing him, not strangling the life from him, but drawing from him all the same. He wrapped himself tighter around the other man – he bloomed, orange and then red, and let himself drift like petals on the wind – and shrank back down, still whole.

The question drifted through the air between them, and it did not cut too deep. Aremu opened his mouth, and let dark yellow sap pour from it, a thumb’s worth – enough for Tom to drink –

“A hammer,” Aremu whispered, closing his eyes and letting the map fill him; letting the light shine through him, golden yellow. It seeped from his brain – down along the tendrils that Niccolette had explained connected the brain to rest of the body, like long lines running beneath the bones and blood and tendons. Nerves, she had called them; the nervous system.

“I found it first due west from the sky over Thul’Ka,” Aremu whispered. “Over the heart of the Turga, where Hulali’s waters meet and join – the first bright star, and it traced up and around.” He could see himself watching – finding the hammer, again and again – shivering in the cold in Ophus, drifting on qinnab smoke with Efrit, tangled in the chainmail of the Eqe Aqawe – drawn together, all of him, a small shape slowly growing – dark inside, limned by light – empty –

Aremu shuddered, and grabbed hold of Tom, and buried himself in the other man; Tom held him, then, and he took a deep breath, shaking, shot through with static, the clouds in his head roiling and dark.

“The first bright star from the horizon,” Aremu found the words again, eyes flicking shut, and he felt the warm weight of Tom beneath him, around him, all through him. He held his eyes shut, and found the shape of the sky inside himself, and held tight to it, shining with light. “There was a path that led from it, five more stars that shone a little brighter than the rest, and they – I can trace a hammer in them. If I reached out – if I squinted – I could hold it.”

I’ve never told anyone this, Aremu wanted to say. This is my heart.

“It moves, with the night and the city and the seasons,” Aremu said, serious. “But if I find it, I can find the rest, like a map – and the searching and the wanting, all tangled together, and… it’s enough,” he opened his eyes, and he thought he could see Tom’s pulse in his neck, the beat of it against his skin. He pressed his lips to it, and let go.

“When you look at the Mahogany,” Aremu said, softly, after a little while. “What do you see?” Golden yellow light, seeping from him; pricking out through his skin, shining through the pores, long threads that wove softly into the world beyond – that reached for Tom, and tangled with the lavender ones that came from him – their nerves, weaving together.

And Aremu understood, suddenly, that they weren’t separate – that it was too late for that, already, that he was already drawn into the other man, and Tom to him; that he could not ease away. He knew without knowing how that he couldn’t unsee it; that they were shimmering together, that he was wrapped around Tom, that to take them apart –

Aremu shifted, then – he brought himself up, and settled himself onto Tom’s lap, facing him, knees resting on either side of the other man’s hips, one hand stroking his cheek, the other pressed against the cushions of the couch behind him. He did not have any words for what it meant for him, and so he offered Tom his breath, again, and the soft press of his body, limned in lavender-gold, and he reached for understanding, and it did not feel too distant, not just then.