Page 101

AFTER THE POOL

WREN

“ Y ou are an idiot.” Kaden’s words are teasing and bubbling with laughter from the far side of the clearing. They are low, and I know I’m not meant to hear them as I sit, still shivering, by the warmth of the fire.

“Well what was I supposed to do? You were sitting, talking her into stripping bare skin in front of the three of us like it would have been nothing…” Rannoch’s response is even more quiet, and it makes me smile into the folds of the blanket around me — a secret, tired, but very happy smile.

As soon as I’d hit the bottom of the pool, maybe even a half breath before, one of Rannoch’s strong arms had wrapped around my waist, and he’d pulled me to the surface, where I’d taken a strange, gulping breath.

Then, without warning, I burst into laughter, bright, chaotic, and all-encompassing.

I couldn’t even paddle — had just clutched Rannoch’s shoulders with slippery hands, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed, full joy pouring from me like a song.

Kaden and Tahrik had both looked poleaxed, and Rannoch strangely angry, but as soon as my feet found purchase in the pool, I’d spun in a circle like a child, before promptly falling down and submerging my head under water again.

This time it was Kaden who pulled me up, but I’d shaken off his hands and jumped up and down, crowing with delight.

“Tahrik!” I called, splashing water his way, soaking his already wet shirt. “Did you see me?”

His face cracked into a reluctant grin as he shook his head and ran a hand over his face. “Did I see you?”

“I swam!”

He laughed, half-amused, half-exasperated. “You sunk , Wren. You sunk. ”

“Sunk, swam, what’s the difference?”

“Breathing, for one…” But my happiness was infectious, and he made his way over to me, taking my hands in his own.

“If you’re going in, you at least need to learn enough not to drown yourself.

Now pay attention,” he’d chided gently, and patiently taught me the basics of not dying whilst in a pool of water.

Kaden and Rannoch had called out small pieces of advice as Tahrik walked me through the motions, but largely left the two of us to our own devices.

It was the first time since we left the village that I felt like we were back to “us”, the us that existed before the rains and the fires, the Traders and the caverns.

Where my laughter was a secret only he knew, and his words were songs for my ears alone.

He’d done his best, carefully guiding me, only holding my hands or arms — years of not being allowed to touch me were hard habits to break.

When he’d gotten cold, lips blue and skin white, Rannoch had taken over.

Much more of a taskmaster, much more brusque, he’d commanded my movements and I’d done my best to follow his instructions like a soldier, delight spilling from me, despite his glare, with careless abandon.

I’d never felt so free with happiness. By the time the light of the day was dying, I’d managed to tread in place for a few moments before going under.

He’d passed me off then to Kaden, who had wrapped his strong arms around me, and swam me to the center of the pool, him on his back, my body laid over his, using him to stay afloat.

Every nerve of my skin was lit up in tiny, shivering flames where his naked skin brushed against mine.

Once we reached the deepest parts of the water, he’d shown me how to lay on my back and fill my lungs to stay on the surface.

Unlike Rannoch and Tahrik, he wasn’t shy with his hands and touching me, correcting me with his body instead of his words, fingers brushing down the side of my torso, trailing along my arms, tracing my sternum.

Every touch was an inferno, creating tiny sparks of warmth on my shivering skin.

We’d stayed there, movements slowing ‘til we were just floating next to each other. It wasn’t until he’d heard the chattering of my teeth that he’d rushed me out to sit by the fire Tahrik and Rannoch had made.

They’d wrapped me in blankets like a child, and then gone to prepare dinner, leaving Tahrik with me to watch over me.

The day, which had started with such desperation, had turned into a sort of euphoria I’d never known, never experienced, and even now a wild exhilaration fills my lungs, skittering along my skin, pushing at the corners of my mouth.

Turning away from the dancing fire, I seek out Tahrik, eager to see a mirror of my own excitement in my friend’s face.

But there is no echo of my emotion written in his eyes, just a sad darkness that seems at odds with the warmth of the fire and the smell of clean water in the air.

“Tahrik?” I ask hesitantly. He does not turn to look at me. “Are you alright?”

There’s a pause, and I wonder for a moment if he even hears me, before he finally sighs, deeply, as though exhaling his soul, and meets my eyes.

It’s to his credit, I think, that he does not turn away from my questioning look.

“I don’t know,” he replies quietly, a terrible rawness in his voice.

“I don’t know.” Leaning back on his hands, he stares back up at the sky above us.

It is open and vast, even with a forest around us, and seems to stretch to infinity.

The moon is close to full, bright enough to cast shadows, and there are a multitude of stars, flowing in sparking rivers through the blue-black ink overhead.

It calls to me, as though it wants me to lift my arms up and embrace it, wrap my arms around the entirety of the night and pull it to me.

I feel…I feel at home in this wild and wondrous space, where water pours from the world above us like a dream, where we can swim in a year’s worth of wealth for our village as though it was nothing, wh ere there are tiny jeweled flowers and shimmering birds — where I can lay beneath the night sky and live until the morning.

Something is being unleashed inside of me, something I never thought existed, and I don’t understand the expression on my friend’s face.

“The sky is so big here…” he whispers, as though to himself, and he rubs his face again with a trembling hand.

“It is the same sky, Rik,” I whisper back, almost silently. Whatever is happening here is between us, and not something for Rannoch and Kaden’s ears.

“Is it, Wren?” He is so sad, like a funeral shroud, like a lost soul.

And I think, I think , we both know it isn’t.

Not really. It may be connected somewhere, maybe patched together with rough stitching somewhere closer to the borders of the Upper Kingdom — but this open sky, with all of its stars and promise — it is something different.

Somewhere different. And we are both different as well, beneath it.

“I miss the stone of the mountains,” he says, voice so homesick it hurts my heart.

I don’t know how to respond, because I…I don’t.

And I don’t know how to comfort him. He came here for me — left the whole of his world behind at the beckoning of my pale finger, and I wonder if he’s regretting his choice.

I can’t bring myself to ask him, don’t want to hear his answer.

So we sit in silence instead, until the crackling fire settles, the pops of moisture burnt away, leaving only the dry, quiet wood.

“Will you sing to me, Tahrik?” I ask quietly.

I don’t know why, other than I love his voice, that the music of our village is one thing we love together, that gives us both comfort.

And it reminds me of a time when I would walk along the bone walls, speaking to the dead, lost in my own world, and Tahrik’s songs were the only shimmering line that tied me to the living world.

Perhaps, in a way, I feel like I need that shimmering string connecting us tonight — that I will float away into the dark sky, never to return, if he does not tie me to himself.

He shifts closer, pressing the side of his body to my own, and I open my arms to pull him into my blankets, before wrapping us up again and leaning my head on his shoulder.

This casual contact is new, and the feel of my hair tumbling down his back and my bare skin pressing into his own catches his breath, so he has to clear his throat and start his words over.

“I…I will always sing for you Wren. Whenever you desire, I am yours to command.” The words are a fervent promise, and he lifts one of my cold hands to his mouth, pressing a swift kiss to my fingertips, before leaning his head against mine, and singing quietly.

”The world was a song, the world was a flower…”

My heart clenches in my chest. I know this tune, although it is an old melody and rarely sung anymore in our village. An aching throb chokes my throat— the feeling of tears — and I wonder why he chose this to end such a happy day.

“The world was a whisper, the whisper your name

Your name was my heartbeat, my heartbeat your smile

I knew you an hour, you seared me as flame

Oh forever’s a moment, forever’s an eye’s blink

Forever’s a promise that cannot be kept

For Reaping or Render

For Silence or Ender

For tears of the Mother, for Maiden who wept.

I saw you as Summer, I watched you in Dancing

I dreamt you as Water, I loved you as Rain,

Forever’s a flesh cut, forever’s a blood oath,

To lose you forever, forever’s my pain.

You’ve gone to the Silence, or gone to the Dreaming

Gone far from the village, Gone far from our shores

Forever was nothing but mirrors and smoke tricks

I loved you forever, forever I’m yours.

I love you forever, forever I’m yours….”

His voice dips low, nothing more than a whisper, and then fades into the darkness of the surrounding night.

Kaden and Rannoch have fallen silent under the spell of Tahrik’s aching, mournful song, each word sounding torn from his heart.

I’m shaking against him, though not from the cold, and he wraps his arm closer around me.

We don’t move or speak further in the dying light of the fire, and if I feel the rain of his tears on my cheek, I know better in this moment than to bring attention to the gift of his tears.

In our village you are born crying, and you die crying, but you rarely waste the water in between.

The thought echoes in my mind. But here, far from our village, where tears were not a luxury we could afford, perhaps we can have something new.

Something more open, where there is space for sadness and joy, for generous laughter, and casual tears.

My eyes fill, and rather than swallowing back my emotions, I let them spill over like the falls near us.

And I decide, sitting next to my first friend, far from everything we have ever known, perhaps we can spare the water.