4.
He slept for much of that afternoon, in the shaded hammock that hangs under the ramada of my little house. I tried not to feel his dreams, but... sometimes they were so strong. Then, one moment, I felt him reaching for me, wondering if I could be... something... but it passed. He slipped back into deep sleep and troubled my feelings no more.
In the evening we went back to the beach. He was very quiet. I felt he was worrying over his dreams. Then he began to feel the water and its life in front of us. We caught a few middle-sized fish, took them home and grilled them with some vegetables from my garden patch. Jorak gazed into the fire, still quiet. I could feel him praying and struggling to decide something.
At last, he turned his thoughts toward me.
"Yes," I said. "You are welcome to stay here for a few days more."
"Thank you."
He went away into the dunes for a while, under the clear, star-clouded night. After the second moon rose, he came back, humming to himself.
Sat down beside the remnants of the small fire. "May I sing for you, Rela? Or... would you care to sing with me?"
I know so few songs. Only things my mother and father taught me....
But then he smiled. Something from the city?
Yes.
Leaned his head back and began to sing a low, heartbreaking song of abandoned love. His voice was really quite lovely, fluid and flowing, hovering over one note, then quickly slipping into another. As he sang I caught visions from him. He was back in the city of Calinova. People crowded around, sitting at tables and chairs, listening to him, and something... there were two or three others on the stage, singing with him. He looked out into the audience and saw... a pale, tall man, and felt such desire and fear mixed together that Jorak thought he was seeing two completely different people. Forcing his mind back to the song, he continued weaving a spell of feeling and concern, pain and joy, love and abandonment....
I stood up, gesturing softly that he continue to sing. Hung a second hammock - one of my parents' - under the ramada while his voice flowed around me. It was a warm night by the sea. We would both sleep outside.
5.
I usually wake early, but he was up before me. Must have been that nap yesterday, I thought, wondering where he was. Then I felt him answering me. He was out in the dunes, praying with the sunrise.
I swung from my hammock and brushed my hair. In a moment Jorak was back.
"I...." he paused.
Yes? I thought.
"I don't want to interfere with your life, I... is there anything I can do to help you while I am here for the next day or so?"
I gestured him into my little house. Retrieved a box of dried berries from the cupboard, thinking how many years it had been since my father had built those simple shelves. I felt Jorak hear me remembering. Opened the box and offered it to him.
"These are the end of last year's cranberries. This year's crop will be ready within a few weeks. Would you like to walk out by the bogs with me today and see how they are coming along?"
He smiled. "You get cranberries this far south?"
"It's the very edge of their range, I've been told. They grow all along the sides of the lagoon swamps, wherever fresh water streams can keep back the brine."
"It must be a ways from here."
"Yes. Several hours walk. Around the end of the lagoon and then inland. The bogs are in flatland at the bottom of a range of hills - maybe you saw the hills from the dunes behind the house."
"Oh yes, north of here?"
"Right."
He finally took a few dried berries, chewed them. "Mmm. Tart, but good. Clears out the mouth."
"They are much better when fresh. If you stay long enough, you'll be able to taste that for yourself."
"When did you say?"
"Soon. Just a few more weeks. I'll know... we'll know when... after we see the bogs today. Want to come?"
He nodded. I could tell he was worried about imposing on my solitude. I thought to him: Since my mother... died... no one else has ever been able to hear me. I wish you could understand how precious that is. I don't always like talking.
He shook his head, sadly, and thought back: And here I've been making you talk to me again.
I reached out my hand, touched his arm. Was about to think something to him, but stopped. The feeling of my hand on his skin was strangely sharp and exciting. I... it frightened me. I pulled back.
He frowned. "I..." Then he stopped his voice. Continued silently. I'm sorry. I should have warned you. Being alone so long you wouldn't know. It can be frightening at first when two people like you and me... with our empathy, with our telepathy, actually touch. Like a fire, or a spark of lightning. Be careful.
The feeling refused to leave me. It flashed up my arm toward my brain, then split at my spinal cord, and headed two directions, up into my mind, and down into my gut. An old, long-forgotten smell came into my head and I suddenly remembered something I had forced myself to forget long ago... my mother. The scent of my mother's hair against my cheek. She was holding me, comforting me after my father had been hitting me, after he staggered off again into the dunes, raving about his demon child and witch wife. I collapsed onto my one rough wooden chair, clasping my arms around me, sobbing. My mother and I had been so close, so in tune, and my father, who did not have this talent, had....
"Rela." The sound of my name pulled me back. Jorak hovered there, a handsome, troubled young stranger at my gate, a rare and fully empathic man, with worry and questions shaking though him... "Do you want me to leave you alone?"
"No, no!" I croaked. Please, please don't go. You're the only one I can tell this too, please, will you listen....
He knelt down, careful not to touch me. I looked up, straight into his eyes, and it all flooded out from my heart. My mother, my father, how she tried to protect me, how he hated that I was like her instead of him, how he had thought he could keep her prisoner, how she had once thought he would protect her, and... how he ended up beating us both, and then, one night, when I was twelve, threw her up against the cabin doorway and cracked her skull.
She died. She was the only one I ever was able to connect my thoughts and feelings with, well, except for a little with the doctor, down in Mouthton, but even he... he doesn't know how strong it is in me. No one could share feelings and thoughts with me like my mother, until... "until you came, Jorak. Please don't go yet. Stay a day or two, like you asked yesterday, before you leave. Let me learn what it can be like."
I lowered by head, reached out my hand again, and took his fingers. This time it was easier. The first shock was over. A faint warmth blew from his hand into mine, as if I could feel his thoughts down there, right in his fingers. They moved, softly, and I knew he was not going to leave, not quite yet.
After all, the palm of his hand said, cupping mine, I want to touch those cranberries.
I looked up into his eyes again, and saw his own pain, hovering there. Like when he was singing last night. He was crying. I reached out, asking him what it had been, but he shook his head, no, not yet. Soon I will tell you, but not now. For now I am crying for you. For your mother. And the tragedy of your father.
He opened his arms just enough to let me know he was there if I wanted. I fell forward into his sheltering hug, and broke into racking sobs of grief, and gratitude. At last, my Lord, at last I can tell someone who is here, in the flesh, beside me. Thank you sweet spirit of grace, thank you holy mother for sending this one understanding brother my way.
I cried for a long time. Perhaps minutes. It seemed hours. But in the end there was still the whole day. We walked quietly to the bogs. All the way Jorak was listening to the scrubby plants and little animals around us. The birds and insects. I began to understand, through his attention, how much of the natural life he had missed living in the great city of Calinova.
The berries were almost ready. Much sooner than I had thought. Another few days and we would need to return with harvesting sacks. I had brought one just in case, and we found a few patches that were so close to being ready that we picked some. Later, we sat by the breaking waves and ate them. The bittersweet tang of the berries played a strange mix with the salt air off the ocean.
In the evening, he taught me a song, and we sang it together. He clacked two pieces of wood against each other for rhythm. I waited for him to tell me more, or show me more, but tonight he was quiet. I saw no visions behind his song.
Before we climbed into the hammocks, he... he hugged me goodnight, and I felt... such a stirring that I knew... I knew I would do anything he wanted to do with me. He shook his head and touched my cheek once. You need to know more about me before you can tell me such a thing.
But I fell asleep with one hand on my breasts, the other curled between my legs, pressing against myself, holding onto that soft, burning desire. I thought he was doing something like that himself, but... it may have been his dreams again. I know mine were... hungry for him. To hold all his naked skin against mine, and....
I wasn't a virgin. A few years after my father left, when I had settled into my own routine of living alone, fishing and keeping my garden, I had a brief sexual relationship with a boy in Mouthton. But it was more play than anything else, although we did... do it a few times, before his parents found out and stopped him from meeting me on the beach. Eventually they sent him down the coast to live with his cousins, and I never saw him again. But that had been almost childish. This... this feeling for Jorak seemed... much more adult. He was young, yes, not even thirty quarter-years, I guessed, but he was a man. And he had seen things.
But he was right. I fell asleep knowing I needed to learn more.
Later, deeper in my dreams, I saw my father and mother, doing... something like what I wanted to be with Jorak, and... I woke crying again. It had killed them. It had caused me to be born and then it had killed them... or... had that fire already gone out between them, long before my father threw her against the door...?