The Crocus' Stem, Cinnamon Hill
He didn’t know what else he could do; he didn’t think it much.
He had to think about it now, Anatole the father, with his daughter and a nebulous family Aremu didn’t want to picture, in that lovely Vienda home. He thought he could see it, a girl with hair like Tom’s was now, standing on the edge of the expensive rug in the study, bowing as her tutor or governess brought her to see her father.
That study had reminded him of nothing so much as his father’s; it was there his mind chased next, and like a strange nightmare when his mind’s eye went to the desk itself, it was his own father sitting there, uninterested, as if he already knew - and he was bowing in the midst of a different rug of Mugrobi make, barely tall enough to look over the edge of the desk.
He couldn’t, he thought; he couldn’t. If he let himself feel this, he didn’t know what he would do with it; he didn’t know what he would do with Tom.
I don’t want to be complicit in it, Aremu wanted to say, and he knew it was already too late. Worse, he thought, that it had been too late long before this. He didn’t know how to put this in the landscape of things he understood; he didn’t know how to draw a diagram of it and trace it across, connect all the pieces and pipes to figure out what it became.
“The best you can, I think,” Aremu said, because he didn’t know what else to say, because he supposed it was as much as he knew of truth. His thumb stroked over Tom’s scalp, because the idea of stopping frightened him than the idea of continuing.
Does love live in the body? It was an absurd question and nonetheless it shouted itself in his mind. I’ve loved you with my body, but where does my love for you sit? I have no soul, Aremu thought, so it cannot be there - unless, of course, I cannot love.
That was self-pity, he thought. He has only to look at Ahura, Apadha, and Efere to know those of his kind could love; he knew he loved Tom, as much as he knew anything.
Maybe love lives in the body, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t have. It seemed cruel, to suggest to Tom his feelings weren’t his own, that they too had spilled over from Vauquelin into him. It seemed unfair, too, for he didn’t know the truth, and even to couch it carefully seemed too close to the sort of lie he didn’t want to tell.
“I don’t know much about fathers,” Aremu said, quietly, aloud, though he hadn’t meant to. That thought, too, he knew he should have kept inside. He shifted, his arm settling a little more about Tom, and brushed his lips over the other man’s hair once more.
“I’m sorry,” he said, then, turning away from it, and trying to hold to Tom all at once; he felt something in him stretch, and he didn’t know whether it would hold or tear. “I didn’t mean to...” he was quiet. You’ll keep her safe, he thought to promise, but he knew better than to believe care was enough for that, that even love was enough for that.
“Is there anything I can do?” His voice scratched in his throat. He didn’t want the question or its answers, a kind refusal or worse any kind of acceptance. He asked, because he didn’t know what else to say or do; he asked, because Tom was shaking in his arms and he didn’t think he could bear it.