Inside me, irreversible processes had begun to work, yet I could not feel it. No churnings, no bubblings, no strange movements. A sigh escaped me, high and lisping, and childhood tunes scampered from my memory. Now I skipped naked in the red dirt of the cable fields, Mima at my side, both of us laughing. Now the pink sky arced over us, a symbol of innocence; the dark was beneath the horizon.
The first assault, when it came, hurtled rudely through my half-sleep. It felt like a knife turning in my stomach, wrenching, pulling, tearing. My entrails were being torn from me. I shot upright in the bed, the room filled with a high, unearthly sound. My own scream. Half-blind with pain, I squinted at my stomach, terrified of what I might see. Nothing. No blood, no spilling, shining ropes. With sobbing breath I lowered myself back under the blankets. Tears ran down my face. The room was so quiet, not even an echo of my cry. Only quick, shallow breaths hissing in my head. As soon as I shut my eyes the invisible weapon plunged into me again. My body threw itself to the ground, arching in agony. Lights zig-zagged across my vision. I clawed the floor, the edge of the bed, myself, anything. (Stop this. Stop this!) A hard surface, cool and smooth, slapped against the back of my hand. I heaved myself forward and rested my cheek against it. (Somebody come. Somebody please come!) Eyes open, movement on the edge of my vision. I turned my head quickly, and looked. Looked into the hideous face of. ... Something. Oh, that something! A fiend. A creature; ghastly. Screeching, I backed away, flailing my arms, falling, helpless. Oh God! The gray-faced demon did the same. Mimicking, mocking. And then I realized. No demon, no creature. Hallucination? No. Just this: a mirror. That is all. As the pain ebbed from me once more, sick fascination made me look again. This . . .? This! Whimpering, I crawled closer to the glass my half-naked scalp gleamed damp and white, a long matted plume of hair fell over my face. My face! Bloated, gray, the eyes rimmed with red, the mouth wet, purpled and slack. My body was bruised and discolored, the left arm nearly twice its normal size. I could look no more. Crumpling onto the floor as a new spasm of incisive pain ripped through me, upwards, from my vitals to my throat. Mucus and blood and frenzied sound sprayed from me. My eyes were blinded by black, marching shapes and ziggurats of light.
Suddenly, activity, voices. "Get him back on the bed!" Strident, unrecognizable. A softer tone: "It's started.
Hands lifted me and where they touched, raw skin seemed to be peeling away like charred paper. Distorted faces peered down at me, eyes like saucers. And then a thin trickle of bitter juice was forced between my swollen lips. My jaws were clenched so tightly, someone had to hit me hard to force them apart. The agony was indescribable. Death would have been preferable, and fight to the death it was. Thiede's blood and mine, and if mine won I knew there would be no me left. As suddenly as it came, the pain shot back to a hidden place to brood. The room flickered, lurched and then settled, perspective see-sawing back to reality. I was gulping breath, swallowing foulness.
"A short respite, Pell." Seel's face hovered over me, disembodied, pale. " This is just the beginning, but we are with you."
Smells of fading years, years of innocence, came back to tease me. An Untimely stillness of Autumn changed the room. Mellow light. The changing; it had begun. My changing. Within myself, within myself.
That was the last thing I could remember clearly. Afterwards, it was horror, pain, fever, filth and sickness. Occasionally, I would feel lucid enough to understand what was happening around me, usually in the afternoon or dead of night. Then the stillness would make me weep as they changed my bedding yet again with weary, fraying patience. Faces haunted my delirium: faces of the future and the past. Sometimes they fought beside me, hands on the same torn banner, but sometimes they only chittered on the edge of my awareness, mere observers.
Mur rubbed my flaking skin with balm. Weeping sores and blisters burst beneath his fingers. He never spoke, only pushing his braided hair back over his shoulder when it fell forward, a frown between his eyes. Once, I remember, vomit flew from my mouth in a great arc and my body constricted like a bow. I was shrieking, "I'm full of insects!" or some such nonsense. Another time, I was convinced the room was alive with squeaking bats, or something like bats, and I was afraid they would settle on my face to block my nose and mouth. Every time I awoke the room was completely different. When the bats were there, it looked just like a cave. Often I hit out at those who tried to help me. Garis lost his temper when I blacked his eye and smacked me across the face. When he did that, the room exploded with stars and I spiralled, laughing hysterically, like a helix shaped atom on the air. Sometimes, if they left me alone for even a
second, I would get out of bed and crawl, gibbering round the room. I kept wanting to get in corners because I felt more comfortable with walls on two sides of me. They would find me, crouched and demented, blood and bile running out of me across the floor. That was some of it. There was more, perhaps worse; thankfully, most of it now forgotten. But I lived to tell the tale, coming out of it; exhausted, wasted, yet alive.
Mur and Garis whispered about me across the bed, I felt they no longer despised me but their presence was still no comfort. A cat jumped in through the window with a musical greeting and leapt into my lap. I tensed, but there was no pain. The animal crawled up my chest and butted my chin with his head, purring rapturously. I hugged him fiercely and he did not struggle. Then I dared to think it: why had Cal not been to see me? A thought I had been rejecting for some time. Was the althaia so repulsive to him? On reflection, it was probably better that he had kept away. Sleek Pellaz of the desert journey was no longer in residence. I had zealously avoided glancing into mirrors because I was sure my appearance still bordered on horrific. I had still not examined my body for outward changes. When Mur, or one of the others attended to me, I kept my eyes shut. I really did not feel any different, apart from ill. I knew I would have to face Cal again soon and it filled me with different tremors. Fear, anger, pleasure and, something else. Something I examined least of all.
The chair was uncomfortable. I squirmed. Mur was beside me. He was kinder toward me than Garis, less harsh, although just as quick with sarcasm. Because of my condition any riposte I attempted was usually embarrassingly feeble. Though I now knew that their cruel treatment of me had been for a purpose, that of bringing me down to a level from which I could rise afresh, they never completely warmed to me. Could beings as perfect as Wraeththu were supposed to be behave in such a way? Part of my ignorance was that I never questioned this.
"Pellaz, try to stand," he told me. 1 just looked up at him stupidly. "Come on!" He stood in front of me, offering his hands. Stand? My legs felt as supportive as thin gristle, but I clasped the arms of the chair. It wobbled beneath me as I struggled to rise. The room swerved around me and nausea punched my ribs. "I can't!" Sweat bubbled from my pores.
"Yes you can. Come on, you have to walk to the bathroom with me."
No mercy, as usual. He held my elbow. "Lean on me." I did not feel pain exactly, but the sensation was sickening. All my guts seemed loose and my loins tingled. Mur half dragged me across the room, accompanied by Garis's spiteful amusement.
1 was bathed again. Mur laughed without cruelty and told me to open my eyes, but I would not.
"You should wash yourself now," he said. "Stop trying to be ill." He left me sitting there in the cooling water. "When you've finished, call me," he remarked over his shoulder. "Don't be scared, it's perfect."
Blood scorched my face, but he did not see. He was already complaining to Garis in the other room. "Help me, will you!" The rustle of my sheets being bundled into the linen basket.
I sat there for about five minutes before I dared to open my eyes. Even then I stared at the wall for a while. It was getting dark. Goose pimples invaded my skin, "Hurry up!" Garis called. I could smell food cooking somewhere below. Horses neighed outside, in the distance. All the light was dim and the air was fragrant with herbs. I looked, and looked, and looked again. There was no damage, no scars. Just this exquisite instrume
nt of magic and pleasure. Not changed too much, just redesigned. An orchid on a feathered, velvet shaft. It is something like that. When I touched it, it opened up like a flower, something moved in the heart of it, but I had seen enough for now. I knelt up in the bath, shivering and called, "Mur!" When he stood in the doorway, our eyes met and a great sense of recognition went through me. That which marked us more indelibly than anything else as Men, a crudity, was transformed in Wraeththu to something alien and beautiful. If it is hidden, it is not from modesty or the fear of giving offense, but because the revealing of it is that much more delightful for its secrecy.
Men did not know about this, but we knew. Mur smiled. Relief melted something hard and cold inside me.
Back in the bedroom, Mur and Garis set about pampering me. They messaged my skin with oil, fluffed my hair, scented me with pungent essences and disguised my eyes with kohl.
I was a little suspicious. "What is all this for? More rituals?" I think Garis would have liked to have given me the back of his hand, hard, across the mouth, but he contented himself with ignoring my questions and curtly silencing Mur if he opened his mouth to answer me.
Tidying away their things, Mur said, "You must rest now, Pellaz. Go buck to bed. Don't overdo it yet."
I felt he was trying to communicate something to me without Garis knowing, but I could not fathom it out. Mur was beginning to like me, or feel sorry for me. He arranged the pillows behind my shoulders before he left.
Once alone, I struggled out of the blankets and weaved over to the mirror. Spots of light speckled my vision, but when the dizziness cleared, 1 could see myself. Once I would have been ashamed at the rush of pleasure my own reflection gave me, but Cal had done something toward dispelling that attitude. Now, I instinctively drew myself up taller, throwing back my head, gazing haughtily back at myself. I liked the shape of my head, and the sides of it shaved, and the shape of my jaw. I looked leaner and somehow older. Ironically, I remembered my sixteenth birthday had past forgotten two days before. Was I now a woman, a woman who needed no breasts to nurse her young, no swelling hips to carry them? And was I not also a man, a man that needed no woman? They had told me there was nothing to fear; nothing.
A knock on the door made me jump. I did not want to be caught posing, and scrabbled, panicking back to the bed. I was beneath the blankets by the time it opened. Then fear and awe and shyness converged within me; it was Thiede. He was standing there in the doorway, so blatantly, unashamedly inhuman, a towering monolith of potency and power. He flicked his fingers and Mur hurried past him into the room, carrying a tray of food. He virtually threw it on the bed and rushed out again without speaking. Thiede closed the door behind him. I cringed beneath his stare, unable to look away. He was, and always is, marvelous to look at. He prolonged the silence, maybe unintentionally, just gazing at me implacably. When he spoke, his voice made me jump again. "Well. How are you Pellaz?" "Oh, fine." I could not clear my throat properly and my voice sounded squeaky. He nodded disinterestedly, turning away, examining the room. How could he be curious about it? "Eat, eat!" he said, waving his hand. I looked at the tray of food with aversion. Thiede's presence did nothing to stimulate the appetite, but I obediently picked up a hunk of bread. It turned to glue in my mouth, and I struggled to swallow.
"Pellaz, now that you are har, there is one final ceremony to be undergone. A ceremony that will make you truly har, and one, I might add, that will make permanent those transformations that have taken place within you." Where was this leading? "They will have told you what aruna is," he stated flatly. A dreadful suspicion flashed through me. Not him! He knew what I was thinking, of course, and fixed me with an indignant scowl.
"No," he said, drily, and then with humor, "not that I wouldn't like to, but in your present state, well, I do not want to be responsible for your death ..."
He came to sit on the bed and I hated him being so close. It was like a fear of being scorched.
"You're so quiet, Pellaz, and so scared. Terror of the unknown, I suppose, and so attractive in the newly har."
He settled himself more comfortably.
"My task as hienama is to prepare you for what comes next. We shall have an intimate little
talk, Pellaz."
I still could not speak. Surely he could hear my heart.
"Aruna: the exchange of essences. First you shall be soume, shall I say the least demanding role? Accept the essence as an elixir; you. need it ... I am pleased with you Pellaz, very pleased."
He stretched out a hand to touch my face. I could understand nothing of what he was saying.
"Now listen to me carefully," he continued. "Aruna can be a powerful thing. It is not merely the basic thing it appears, but a coming together of two dynamic beings, a mingling of their inner forces. A drawing together. Hear this, Pellaz. One day a stranger will recognize you and you shall recognize him. You will both know. Inexorably you will gravitate toward each other and only in aruna express your innate need. Not only the exchange of essences, achieved through that elevating state aruna is, but something more. One day, your seed will become a pearl in the nurturing organs of another. Then you will sire your first son . . . then. But for now . . ." He stood up again, smoothed the soft material of his trousers, shook out his hair and turned to look at me again. "Do not confuse what may happen to you with the self-destructive emotions of Mankind. They once called it love, didn't they? So true, so special, so rotten. Hara may come together for aruna; their friendships may be loyal, but there is never the greed of possession to blacken the heart. Never. Does it frighten you to hear me say we can never fall in love?" I shook my head, wishing he would leave. "I'm glad you understand me. They have chosen for you, Pellaz. You are in good hands, or so Seel tells me." He was no longer looking at me, walking to the middle of the room. "Surpass yourself, Pellaz. Take hold of the life I have given you."
1 had not spoken once. Perhaps drowsiness overtook me, perhaps the door opened, perhaps the air fractured around me. . . . The next time I looked at that place in the room where Thiede had stood, he had gone. I tried hard to think about what he had said but could not understand most Of it. I shivered. Aruna. The word that sounded whispering, blue-green, shadowed. I put the tray of food down on the floor and lay back on the bed. Outside, the sun sank lower and lower until the light in the room had nearly faded away. No-one came to light my lamp or to take my tray away. The house felt empty. Not even a cat to keep me company. I kept thinking of Thiede and suddenly the gloom frightened me. I jumped off the bed too quickly and reeled over to the table. Dizzy and shaking, I fumbled with the matches, heart pounding. As a welcome petal of light bloomed in the glass the door opened behind me.
1 felt it rather than heard it, expecting "What are you doing? Get back On the bed!" or some such outburst, but it did not come. Before I turned, I knew it would be Cal. His face was a mirror: me in the caressing lamp-light.
"Oh, it's you." My voice barely shook. I could not bear to look at him and went back to sit on the bed where the light was dimmer. Actors on a stage, playing out this premeditated performance. He knew his part well. I did not even know my lines. Anger made me itch. I wanted to look up at him with welcome in my eyes, but shyness and embarrassment had frozen all sensation. Encased in ice it glowed there inside me.
"Hello, Pell," he said, in a voice which told me he knew I was going to be difficult.
Fists clenched in my lap, I launched into the attack. "Well, as you see, I am alive. Had they told you? I thought, perhaps, you'd left Saltrock." I had my back to him, but could vividly imagine his eyes rolling upward in exasperation. No reaction. I brought out the big guns. "Why are you here?"
"It's my room. While you were ill, I was sleeping elsewhere. I'm moving back in now, if you don't mind."
Well countered, I thought. His voice gave nothing away. I wondered how long he would wait. Was he ordered to produce results? He sauntered over to my window chair and flamboyantly threw himself down in it, steepling his hands, tapping
his lips with his fingers, staring passively out at the yard below. I would have given anything for Thiede's talent of perception. Cal's thoughts were barred by stronger locks than I could break through. Huge, white moths batted moistly against the window, trying to reach the halo of my lamp, or the halo of Cal's bright hair. I wanted him to beat down my defenses, but guessed instinctively he never would. Cal was a great believer in letting other people take the initiative. He made them work for him, just conceited enough to know that they always would. (How could I have known that Cal's darker side went a lot deeper than mere conceit?) Sitting there, sparring and sniping and circling each other, we both knew what the score was. It was just a question of who would back down first. It might easily have gone on for days. I wanted to say, "Cal, look at me. I am har. I am one of you. We are equal, you cannot treat me as less." My mind was racing in the awkward silence. He would say nothing. I would have to provoke him again. "Cal," I began, and his eyes lashed up and caught me, calculating, without warmth, challenging. The merest implication of a smile hovered over his face. "Go on," he was thinking, "go on."
"I . . ," (Oh God, what?), "I still get tired easily. Thiede was here . . . I'm . . . well, goodnight." I could feel him studying me as I burrowed into the blankets, lying there, heart pounding, reciting childhood prayers; I think those few moments are among the worst I have ever lived through. Something hit my pillow, softly. Through slitted eyes I saw a single perfect crocus inches from my nose. Deep purple fading to lilac at the petals' tip, an aching yellow flame within its heart.