No, it wasn’t. And even though Lileem had consumed one and a half bottles of her own wine, it occurred to her then that perhaps Terez was not the reason for Flick’s behaviour.
‘Maybe we’re not chesna at all,’ Ulaume said gloomily. ‘Maybe we’re kidding ourselves we are, because we’ve been thrown together.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Lileem snapped. ‘I think maybe it has something to do with what happened with the Uigenna. Flick’s got time to think now. He’s punishing himself for that.’
‘He seemed fine when we first got here. More than fine. He’d put all that to rest.’
That was true, and Lileem didn’t really believe her own words either. It was a puzzle. ‘Perhaps you should…’ She paused.
‘What?’
‘Well, when I was little, you found out about my friendship with Mima because… because you spied on me.’
Ulaume stared at her with wide eyes. ‘Are you suggesting Flick is meeting somehar in secret?’
‘No! I don’t know what I’m suggesting, but aren’t you curious to see what he gets up to on his own out there? Maybe the mountains are getting to him in a weird kind of way. I don’t know. I just think there’s more to all this than we imagine.’
Ulaume sighed, and took a long drink. ‘You’re not wrong there! I’ll think about it.’
‘Perhaps,’ Lileem said, inspired by alcohol, ‘perhaps Astral can still take him into the otherlanes. Maybe that’s what he’s been doing, and he’s become sort of addicted to it.’
‘I’d not thought of that.’
‘Well, it’s worth investigating.’
For a couple more weeks, nothing else was mentioned. Days flowed into balmy days and Lileem was sure the perfume of the mountain flowers had got into her blood. She felt drunk all the time, intoxicated and heady. Something momentous was approaching, and it was a marvellous feeling. In her heart, Lileem suspected what that might be. She was thinking of Terez, and that there always had to be a solution to everything, and that she would find the one she was looking for.
One night in bed, she asked Mima again about what had happened with Chelone. Mima now found this story extremely funny and she could tell it very well. She was often asked to recount it at friends’ houses, because some Kamagrian had had similar experiences and liked to discuss them. When it was Mima’s turn to talk, she’d have a roomful of parazha choking with laughter, which was often a welcome counterpoint to the stories of sadness and grief.
Now, Lileem laughed, as she always did, but her heart was racing. She had to wait for her moment, an appropriate pause in the story, but eventually, it came and she asked: ‘Would you do it again?’
Mima regarded her quizzically. ‘Hmm. Would I? Kaa tells us it’s dangerous, life threatening.’
‘But is it?’
‘Why?’
‘I just wonder about things, that’s all. So many parazha have been drawn to hara, and it’s always ended up badly, but… I just wonder.’
‘Some of us would have to be brave enough to experiment and – who knows? – lives might well be lost in the process.’
‘You didn’t die.’
‘I was lucky. Or so I’ve been told.’
There was a silence.
‘Be careful, Lee,’ Mima said softly, taking a lock of Lileem’s hair in her hand. ‘I don’t want to lose you.’
It was difficult to keep things from Mima.
‘The Roselane have few rules,’ Mima continued, ‘but we both know that is one of them. You’d be hard pressed to find a har round here who’d break it.’
‘I know,’ Lileem said. ‘It’s just talk.’ She paused. ‘Will we live here forever until we die?’
Mima lay on her back, her arms behind her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t.’
Chapter Thirty One
Midsummer, and its attendant festival, came and went, and now Shilalama prepared itself for the great Feast of the Mountain Walker, which lay between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox. This was the time when a strange atmosphere pervaded the land, the heat shimmered above the lichened rocks, and weird beings crawled forth from the cracks and hollows to haunt the high meadows at mid-day. The Mountain Walker was a noon ghost, the spirit of the land. In his presence, anything became possible. He was the heat of summer, the fire of the spirit and the Roselane lord of aruna. On his festival night, parazha cast off their restraints and abandoned themselves to pleasures of the flesh.
‘Who knows,’ Mima commented, ‘we might get to see a side of our pious sisters we actually like!’
Lileem knew Mima didn’t really mean this, as they now had good friends among the Roselane, hara and parazha alike, but it might be interesting to discover what the Kamagrian were like when they let down their hair. At the very least, it was curious that the entity they revered at this time was regarded primarily as masculine.
Tel-an-Kaa was home for the festival, which she claimed she never missed and, when she called round one evening, she tried to answer some of Lileem’s queries about it. They were sitting out in the yard, with a group of friends, including Terez and Ulaume. Flick, as usual, was absent.
‘The Mountain Walker is our male aspect,’ Tel-an-Kaa said, ‘and we only let him out fully at certain times. He is the scent of growing things, the scent of the earth. He is the creatures that live upon it. He is the creative principle, the seed sower. He is ouana.’ She grinned. ‘I must stop talking about this. I have a strong urge to carry you off to bed now.’
‘Well, we could do that,’ Lileem said coquettishly, wholly aware of Terez sitting somewhere nearby, although she would not look at him.
‘Unfortunately,’ Tel-an-Kaa said, ‘kind though the offer is, I have work to do tonight and must go to Kalalim shortly. But…’ She winked at Lileem. ‘…on the festival night, I intend to be off duty completely.’
Everyone laughed then, and Mima said, ‘OK, can I make a date with someone now please? Otherwise, it seems I’m going to be moping round alone that night!’
‘No chance of that!’ a parage said, conjuring more laughter.
They had all spoken quite frankly in front of Terez, who might now be wondering why the Roselane only let their male sides out at certain times of year. There was an excited expectant atmosphere in the yard, and Lileem wished parazha could be like this more often. Perhaps an enterprising parage could begin to make changes in Shilalama.
Most of their guests stayed late, and dawn was approaching as Mima and Lileem said goodbye to the last of them and began carrying empty cups and bottles into the house. Lileem went back outside to fetch more and saw that Terez was sitting very close to Ulaume, his hand on Ulaume’s shoulder. Ulaume was hunched up, his head hanging low. Terez whispered something in Ulaume’s ear and Ulaume jumped to his feet, crying, ‘No!’ He virtually knocked Lileem over as he pushed past her into the house.
Lileem went to gather up the cups around Terez’s feet. ‘Whatever you just suggested was a bad idea,’ she said.
Terez shrugged. ‘It’s ludicrous that he’s here, all miserable, while Flick is out doing whatever he pleases. He should loosen up a bit. Give Flick something to be jealous for.’
‘He’s not jealous of you.’
‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’
‘Then don’t make it any worse.’ She dared to look Terez in the eye then and saw at once he was very drunk. ‘Go to bed.’
He stood up, unsteadily. ‘Is that an order, tiahaar?’
‘Yes. Go on. Don’t cause any more trouble.’
Terez laughed and grabbed hold of her. ‘What? Like this?’
She held his gaze. ‘No, I don’t call this trouble.’
She couldn’t help herself. She just put down the cup she was holding and embraced him in return. Sharing breath with him was like inhaling the scent of burning black flowers. She wanted to suck the breath from his lungs. She wanted to suck out his life.
He broke away from her lips and inhaled deeply. ‘Now I’m se
eing stars,’ he said. ‘You’re hungry.’
‘So are you. You’re not getting much, are you?’
Terez laughed, still holding her tight. ‘The Roselane are not exactly to my taste, but… well, there’s been the occasional fumble. What’s your excuse?’
Lileem kissed his cheek. ‘Can you feel it? We both want to be ouana. Now how about that? How do you sort that out?’
‘Lee, you are shocking,’ he said. ‘Mima would kill me.’
‘Only if you killed me,’ Lileem said. Reluctantly, she let him go. ‘Never mind that. Just go to bed and tomorrow this will seem like a dream.’
He pulled her hair playfully. ‘One I’ve had before.’
After he’d gone into the house, Lileem danced on the spot for over a minute.
Lileem knew that on the festival night, whatever plans others might have for her, she was going to take aruna with Terez. Like Mima had been in the past, she was driven and certain. She did not fear death, because she felt more than capable of dealing with any consequences. Lileem was far more experienced than Mima had been when she’d taken aruna with Chelone. If things got out of hand, Lileem was sure she could deal with it. What she couldn’t deal with was the unbearable longing to be close to Terez. If she didn’t do something about it, she’d go mad.
For the next few days, she paid him scant attention, all the while conscious of his puzzlement and confusion. She could feel him begging her to look at him, so they could exchange a glance. He needed to see something looking out of her, but she wouldn’t give in. It was a powerful feeling.
Flick, not really to anyone’s surprise, did not show any great enthusiasm for the festival, although he did agree to accompany Ulaume to the party being held in the grounds of Kalalim. Lileem was headachy with anticipation for the evening ahead, but she still had a moment of sadness when she thought about how Ulaume and Flick had somehow fallen apart. Since Terez had arrived, she’d been so wrapped up in her fantasies and dreams, she hadn’t noticed that she’d lost a close friend. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Flick had had a conversation. Soon, she must do something about it. They couldn’t just let Flick slip away from them like this. It was obvious that he was deeply troubled, because as well as his long absences from the house, when he was present his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Flick has become sullen and short-tempered, traits he’d never had before.
The celebratory mood in the city that night was infectious, however, and even Flick seemed more like his old self as the five of them walked to Kalalim. Lileem hadn’t yet had a drink, but felt intoxicated nevertheless and drew Flick away from the group. Mima was leading them all in a rowdy song and none of them paid any attention to Lileem and Flick hanging back from them a little.
Lileem took Flick’s arm and murmured to him, ‘Are you in love with somehar else?’
He gave her a strange guarded look. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘I’m looking for answers, however wild. I want my friend back, the one I used to talk with, the one who helped me through all kinds of problems. I love him very much, you see.’
Flick took a deep breath. For a while, he did not speak, and Lileem let him have the silence. Then he said, ‘We’ll talk. Tomorrow.’ He pulled on her arm to make her stop walking. ‘Lee, if I speak to you, you must vow on everything you hold sacred not to repeat it. Will you do that?’
She nodded. ‘Of course. You’ve kept my secrets often enough.’
‘It’s big,’ he said.
She squeezed his arm. ‘I can tell.’
‘I’ve thought about confiding in you for weeks, but I don’t want to compromise your position. The thing is, I’ll lose my mind if I keep this to myself for much longer.’
Lileem studied him for a moment. Was this about another har or the otherlanes? What else could it be? Had he simply lost interest in Ulaume? Lileem could not read Flick’s thoughts. She could not even pick up the faintest glimmer. ‘Look, try to enjoy yourself tonight. Give that to Lormy at least. Don’t hurt him any more.’
Flick grimaced. ‘That is uppermost in my mind, whatever any of you think.’
The palace of Kalalim is an organic structure that appears to grow from the earth itself. Its spires are like twisted pinnacles of raw rock and are strung with many flags. On festival nights, when Opalexian opens her home to all in the city, visitors pass through a gatehouse into a square courtyard, and from there through a wide covered passage into the tiered gardens beyond. Kalalim houses the governmental offices of Roselane and because Opalexian is high priestess of their religion, the main temple is also part of the complex.
On the fated night of the Festival of the Mountain Walker, Kalalim was decorated with carnival extravagance. Even before Lileem and her companions arrived, the sparkling flowers of fire-crackers filled the sky and musicians were playing loudly. A huge crowd had gathered in the sprawling gardens, perhaps the entire population of Shilalama. Hara, parazha and humans alike were all dressed in festival costumes and many were masked, perhaps to hide their identities in an attempt to rid themselves of inhibition. The scent of roasting lamb mingled with the sugary aroma of frying sweet-cakes. Opalexian, although absent from the celebrations herself, had donated vast quantities of wine and ale from her personal cellar. The Roselane might often be ascetic, but this didn’t always extend to their diet. Improved Wraeththu and Kamagrian physiology meant that fewer foodstuffs were toxic to the body, and it would be a dour creature indeed who did not take advantage of that, at least at festival times.
Lileem and her companions found themselves a table near the main lake below the palace. Lanterns cast a pale yellow glow over the water, and the huge orange and black carp that lived within it clustered near the banks hoping for crumbs. In the places where stone steps descended into the lake, the surface was a seethe of slithery fins and scales.
Ulaume suggested some of them go to find drinks, and somehow, without too much obvious effort on Lileem’s part, it ended up that she and Terez were left alone for a while, sitting on opposite sides of the table. When their hands rested on the wood, they were almost touching.
‘This is better,’ Terez said. ‘Hara around here should do this more often.’
Lileem could sense he felt awkward with her, perhaps not sure himself what he was feeling or why. ‘Are you glad you came here, or do you secretly crave your old life of the mysterious, romantic loner?’ she asked.
He studied her for a moment, perhaps wondering whether she was mocking him. ‘It’s not too bad. I can’t think of anything better to do, and to be honest it’s sometimes a relief to have a bed to fall into at the end of the day and know there’ll be good food on the table.’
Lileem wondered how he could say that without remembering his human family, who’d been slaughtered, but she didn’t want to open up a line of conversation in that direction, so did not comment. ‘I’m glad you came,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘and that disturbs me.’ He glanced behind him, as if to check the others were not returning, then leaned closer towards her and spoke in a low voice. ‘What is this, Lee? I think of you all the time, and I gather I’m not supposed to.’
She laughed. ‘We are not as dissimilar as you think.’
‘I don’t think anything, because I have no idea what you are. You call yourself ‘she’, but you look like a har to me. You taste like one. And every time you walk past me, and I catch a whiff of your scent, my body goes into shutdown. We shared breath, and under normal circumstances, that’s just the beginning, but I don’t know what to think about you.’
‘It’s complicated,’ she said, ‘but we like each other, don’t we? We can follow our instincts.’
‘Can we? I want to think so, but something bothers me. I don’t know what it is. I get the impression that if anything happened between us, it’d have to be secret and that’s not right.’
‘It’d have to be secret because there are…’ She sighed. ‘Oh, Terez, I’m not sure what I can tell you. We can take aru
na together, but there might be unexpected consequences.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I’m a special kind of har, that’s all. Arunic energy can manifest some strange things.’
‘Does this happen with Mima?’
‘No, because she’s the same as me. She had a peculiar experience in Galhea and since we came here, we’ve discovered it’s happened before. We are safe with each other, but we’ve been told there are dangers in being close to normal hara.’
‘What kind of dangers?’
‘Reality can go a bit squishy. Apparently.’
He blinked. ‘What?’
‘It’s nothing I can’t deal with, believe me. If I thought otherwise, I’d never have shared breath with you.’
‘Is this why you call yourself ‘she’? Because you are apart from normal hara?’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Lileem said, grinning. ‘I’ve simply got used to it. It doesn’t mean anything. It just took a while for me to develop ouana characteristics, that’s all. Everything’s fine now.’
Terez didn’t appear to be convinced. ‘I think there’s more,’ he said.
Lileem took his hands in hers and at once a tingling started up in her palms. They were both shooting off energy like the fireworks in the sky. ‘Trust me,’ she said.
He stared at her gravely, raised her hands to his nose, closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, then said, ‘We’ll see.’
The others returned, bearing several large flagons of wine, and the five of them applied themselves to the task of getting drunk. Dancing had started in the courtyard of the palace, but after a few hours, this spilled out into the gardens, until the lake was surrounded by cavorting bodies. Musicians ran among them, playing fiddles, banging drums and tambourines or blowing pipes. The infectious riotous mood was impossible to resist and so it was that Lileem found herself dancing with Terez and they were spiralling away from the lake, towards the shadows of tall trees, where the grass underfoot was wet with dew and smelled like the elixir of life. The moment the darkness beyond the lantern light enfolded them, it seemed the sounds of the festival faded away. The song of the wind, high in the trees, was very loud. Terez and Lileem shared breath, still dancing, until they both came to a standstill and drew away from one another. Lileem could barely make out his features in the dim light. He took her hand and they walked in silence, deeper into the trees, where the gardens of Kalalim melded into the wild landscape beyond. They found a hollow, surrounded by gnarled ancient evergreen shrubs: a spidery nest of crackling old leaves.