erhaps, she says.
It prickles all up and down his spine. She is smiling, all lit up in gold. He doesn’t look down at the circles; he can barely hold the words, as she goes on. You know, he thinks. You know what I am, and this is why you’ve brought me here.
It’s only a splitsecond; his expression doesn’t change. The fear falls away like a curtain, and he nods slowly, his brow knit, as she guides his thoughts back onto the path. “I will keep it,” he says. She knows he knows the value of a secret, if not why – or just how much – but he knows the value in saying it aloud, too; he knows a little more of Mugrobi truth now, and he knows that when an honorable man says it aloud, he can be held to it.
He doesn’t say how much he was just wishing he’d brought his notebooks, to sketch out some of these symbols. He should’ve known there was no point; ib’vuqem were exhaustive in their note-taking, even to the point of irrelevant asides, and he knew they’d’ve at least made note of something like this.
He’d been groggy when he’d left Emeka’s house behind. Now, everything’s vivid and sharp with wakefulness. She goes on, and the knowing drops through him, sinks inside him, cold and heavy with realization. He doesn’t even know yet what he knows – just that he’s on the threshold, and he’s begun to see what’s beyond the door.
“Thank you for trusting me with it,” he adds when she takes his hand. She leads him to the edge of the plot, the mona still warmly intermingled around them.
Outside the lines, he doesn’t hesitate before he sits; nor does he ask her why, nor does he let the lingering fear that crawls at the back of his neck compel him. He owes her this much. They sit across from each other on the smooth cold stone, and he’s happy for a moment just to have the weight off his hip.
The truth of my memories, she says, and the truth of my heart.
He listens very closely, though there’s no need. Even her soft voice fills up the chamber. It weaves and lopes through the story, and if at first he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t have to; it’s each word, one after the next, like the stories in her grandfather’s book. Building, building. Her vowels are longer, he thinks, in the days since they’ve come to Dkanat.
His eyes are wide, but they don’t widen – he doesn’t jolt – when she speaks of the woman. The expression on his face isn’t a smile or a frown, but it turns wistful; his hands are just as soft on hers as hers on his. His breathing follows the rhythm of hers.
A priest did not fear me – His throat tightens; he looks out of these eyes at her, and keeps the wistful look on his face. I did not fear her, and…
She’s finished, and he’s quiet, their hands still together between them. He doesn’t look away from her face. I believe you, he might’ve said to an Anaxi. “I don’t believe it was only a hallucination, either,” he said softly, “for what that’s worth. I think you know that already.” His lip twitched; it was almost a smile, for just a second.
When he finally looks away, he looks at the ward. He might feel it, he thinks, if he shuts his eyes and tunes out everything else; he wonders if the tsorerem keep it, or if the power of it is such that it has lasted. Everspell, he doesn’t dare think.
Whatever it is, it hasn’t pulled him from himself; he feels safe, or as safe as he ever does.
I have seen things, since –
“I have also seen things,” he says, looking back at her. “I’ve never reached out to one like her, but I –” He swallows, and his hands twitch. “I’ve seen possession,” he says, “and… worse. Since the bend in my river.
“I’m not so much of a storyteller,” he says. “But this is one truth of mine. In Bethas of last year, I was in Brunnhold’s phasmonia; I, and a student that had also come to the phasmonia, came across – a ghost. An angry, hungry ghost, who had to be warded.
“I’m familiar with spells of reaching-out and warding, even if I’ve never cast them before – except for the ward that I meditate with.” He breathes in deep. “I’ve spent a great deal of time feeling – my wits were in question, if I looked too closely at what’s happened to me. Trying to learn more, because I’ve no choice.”
I need you to know, he wants to say, what I am. There are priests that would fear me, if they knew.
She did not let me look, even when I tried; she cupped my head in her other hand, and she asked me to tell her more about the goats … “It doesn’t sound to me like the woman meant you any harm,” he says, smiling a little. “I understand why you’d want to find her again.”