Dear Abby (7 page)

When they are panting and spent,
Ixazaluoh
pinning Abby to the mattress with her body, like
a living blanket, she kisses the day-old bite mark on Abby's neck and says:
"It's the solstice tomorrow. I have the day off. Come home with me."

"Off the
resort?"
Abby asks, startled.

Ixazaluoh
laughs. "Afraid
you'll be mugged or shot in the face?"

It's a cruel tease. Tourists get mugged all
the time when they wander off their leashes.

"Not with you," Abby says. "I
just thought… I just thought that you wouldn't… want anyone to see us.
Me. Together."

"I have no shame of you, Abby,"
Ixazaluoh
says. "You are mine, and I have pride in
that."

Abby wraps one of
Ixazaluoh's
curls around her finger, over and over again, instead of answering.
Ixazaluoh
grasps her chin gently between her thumb and
forefinger and raises her face, forcing Abby to meet her eyes.

"Abigail,"
Ixazaluoh
says softly. "Are you ashamed of me?"

"No!" Abby blurts. "No! I
just… I'm
concerned
is
all.
Are you bringing me
home to show me off like a trophy? You know, 'look what I got into'? Or is this
some sort of, I don't know… do you want to move home with me?"

Ixazaluoh
laughs.
"Neither. Well, no, I will admit, you are a catch and I am going to enjoy
flaunting you over the others. But I cannot leave. And you cannot stay."

"I could," Abby ventures. "I
could quit my job, give away my cat,
terminate
my
lease."

"And what would you do in Mexico with no
job, no apartment, and no cat?"

Abby feels silly and childish, but she ducks
her head, full of juvenile embarrassment and says, in a very small voice,
"Be with you?"

Ixazaluoh
shakes her head
slowly. "That will not put food in your stomach."

"Then how is this supposed to
work?" Abby asks. "How can I be yours and not be here at all? This is
a one-time thing, isn't it? You're just talking pretty. And I'm reading too
much into it." She sniffs, miserable, and refuses to cry. "Just like
I
always
do."

"You are mine and I am keeping you until
the day you die,"
Ixazaluoh
says firmly.
"But you will go home and you will tell your bosses to send you to places
that aren't resorts, and to let you write the kind of stories you want, and
they will. And you will do
good
with your work and see
the world, and then, when you have the time and the money, you will come back
and ground yourself in me."

"You can't just say that and think it
will happen that way," Abby protests.

"I can, and I have. I am
Ixazaluoh
and my pronouncement has been made. You are my
devotee, and you will do as I say, for I love you."

There is something… deep, in
Ixazaluoh's
voice.
Something
more
.
Abby feels like she's been struck by lightning, like it’s forked straight
through her skin, through the muscle and the blood and the organ tissue and
scorched the very marrow of her tailbone. She pulls back from
Ixazaluoh
, slowly,
feels her eyes
going round. She looks down, and curses, mentally, because she's forgotten.

She's forgotten, utterly, that
Ixazaluoh
has no shadow. Even in the soft glow of the
bedside lamp, no darkness collects under her body, no black stains the white
sheets.

"Tomorrow is the solstice and I
need
you
,"
Ixazaluoh
says softly.

No one has ever
needed
Abby before.

"What are you?" Abby asks, instead
of answering.

"I am
Ixazaluoh
,"
she says.

Abby shoves herself across the mattress and
somehow ends up on her feet, though she's not entirely sure how she's staying
upright. Her head is spinning. Her whole fucking
world
is spinning.

"Oh my Christ," Abby groans, one
hand on her forehead, one on her stomach, as if either would keep the
realization from striking home. "You think you're a goddess?"

"I do not
think
,"
Ixazaluoh
says. She is sitting on the side of the bed,
utterly regal in her nudity, looking perfectly composed even with her long dark
hair a tangle of sweat-matted curls and sex-created tangles. Her eyes flash,
and there is something more, something
deeper
in them that makes Abby
stumble back, bark her heel against the side of the desk and yelp. The whites
of
Ixazaluoh's
eyes are too white.

Abby clutches at the office chair to stay
upright and sucks in giant gulps of air, hoping that somehow more oxygen will
make this all make
sense
.

Ixazaluoh
still has no shadow.

"How are you doing that?" Abby
asks, pointing at
Ixazaluoh's
feet. They’re beautiful
feet. Her pedicure is teal and smooth. Abby just spent ten minutes kissing and
licking those feet and now they are on the floor and they have no darkness
around them at all.

"I am corporeal only to you, Abby,"
Ixazaluoh
says. "The light passes through
me."

And when Abby looks, she can see that the bed
isn't sunk, either. There are no wrinkles around
Ixazaluoh
,
no dents in the sheets that show that she's sitting on the bed.

"Fair warning, I think I might be
sick," Abby says, and gulps some more air, swallowing it down to keep her stomach
where it should be. She doesn't fancy finding out what the sweet burn of
tamales is like in the other direction.

"No,"
Ixazaluoh
murmurs and stands. She takes a step towards Abby, arm outstretched, and Abby
skitters back, terrified.
Ixazaluoh
keeps coming,
though, backs Abby right up to the wall beside the patio doors, until there's
nowhere left to go.

Abby can't get enough air in her lungs. Her
throat is screaming for water. The soles of her feet itch with the desperate
desire to flee and her fingers ache where she's balled them up into fists.
People can't really feel their pupils dilate, but she can imagine she can, in
this moment. She is so hyped up on
fight or flight
that she feels like
she could stop time itself if she had a mind to.

"Don't touch me, don't touch me!"
Abby screams, flattening herself to the stucco, and
Ixazaluoh
ignores her.

She lays one smooth palm against the naked
skin of Abby's stomach. Abby sucks it in, trying to keep away, and then warmth
bursts under her skin. For a second Abby feels like she's on fire, is terrified
that the creature in front of her has immolated her for her disobedience, but
the heat immediately dwindles into the soft radiating warmth of a hot water
bottle on an upset stomach. The nausea vanishes immediately.

Abby forces herself to stay still, stay
still, don't provoke the predator. When the heat dissipates, she looks up, up,
up into
Ixazaluoh's
dark eyes.

"How… how did you do that?"

"I am
Ixazaluoh
,"
she says, softly, gently. "And you are mine."

Ixazaluoh
takes a step back,
the soft
pat
sound of her soles on the tile floor unbearably sensual.
She holds her hand out to Abby, palm up, fingers in a loose, non-threatening
curl.

"Come back to bed. Please," she
says.

Abby feels her shoulders curl towards her lover
without her conscious input.
Two days and already tamed.
She unclenches her fists and chews on her bottom lip.

"Are you human?" Abby asks. It
seems like the most ridiculous thing in the world to say out loud. The kind of
thing only asked in fiction novels and blockbuster films. But
Ixazaluoh
has no shadow.

"No,"
Ixazaluoh
says, and smiles. It is the
more
smile, the one that fascinated and
enraptured Abby from the start and she feels some of the fear uncurl from
around her heart, flowing down her limbs and out across the floor.

"Will you… are you going to hurt
me?"

"No."

"Do I have any choice?"

Ixazaluoh
hesitates.
"No," she says at last.

Abby takes her hand and lets her pull her
back towards the bed.
Ixazaluoh
arranges her under
the duvet, like a doll, and Abby can't
untense
,
doesn't like when
Ixazaluoh
gets behind her where she
can't see.

"Relax,"
Ixazaluoh
whispers in her ear as she snugs up behind Abby. Yesterday, when she did this,
it was sexy. Now it's scary. Now Abby feel trapped and isolated, alone and cut
off from the herd. She tries to wriggle away and
Ixazaluoh
clamps down with her thighs and arms and Abby can't
move,
can't get
away,
can't
breathe
.

"Stop, let me up, stop!" Abby
cries.

Ixazaluoh
wraps a hand in
Abby's hair and pulls her face back and kisses her silent. Kisses her until
Abby has no air, goes limp because she has no other choice. Terror jackrabbits
beneath her sternum.
Ixazaluoh
releases her grip on
the back of her head, presses her mouth against the love bite and nibbles. Abby
sucks on the air.

"You said you wouldn't hurt me,"
Abby says, and she can hear the petulance in her own voice but she can't seem
to moderate it. She
feels
petulant. She's scared and she's desperate
because she can feel the choice melting away from her, feel the agency turning
into steam, and she needs to cling to the illusion that this is something she
can negotiate, this is something she can
choose,
while she still has the
time to choose it. Petulant because she's being asked to
trust,
and she wants to trust, but how can she trust if
Ixazaluoh
doesn't keep her word?
And even if
Ixazaluoh
didn't keep her word, then what?

Abby has no choice.

But wouldn't be better to have the illusion
of a loving relationship than the truth of force?
Of...slavery?

"You hurt me," Abby says again.
"Please, don't."

"Relax and I won't,"
Ixazaluoh
says, words smearing against Abby's shoulder,
like honey and oil. "I'd rather not. I'd rather if you were...
happy."

Abby closes her eyes and concentrates on
unwinding, works her way through a breathing exercise she learned in one of the
resort's yoga classes, and tries to ignore the
thing
hovering just at
her back because the moment she thinks about it she's going to tense up again.
Calm flows across her skin like rainwater.
Ixazaluoh
kisses
her shoulder, a sort, sweet pucker, and Abby exhales sharply.

"Much better, Abby,"
Ixazaluoh
praises. She runs her hands down
Abby's
side, cups her bottom, and it feels a bit like being
petted. Like a cat. "Good girl. You're so clever. You learn so quickly."

"What now?" Abby whispers.

Ixazaluoh
sighs. "Do you
remember who
Ixazaluoh
is?"

"Goddess of water and weaving, of
women's arts," Abby answers, obedient.
Terrified.

"Yes."

"And that's you?"

"That's me."

"You're a goddess."

"Yes."

"That's
crazy!
" Abby blurts
before she can reel it in. She goes still, screws her eyes shut, waits for a
slap to fall or a fist, for a bite, for punishment. She holds very, very still.
And when nothing happens, she slits her eyes.

Ixazaluoh
is curved above her,
looking down, a great, heavy sadness sloping her shoulders, hanging like dew in
her hair. The lamplight has created a blue-black halo of her frizz.

"You really do fear I'll hurt you,"
Ixazaluoh
breathes.

"…yes."

Ixazaluoh
leans down and
kisses her softly, kisses her gently, kisses her pliant and slick and open,
until Abby has rolled onto her back and spread her thighs, welcoming her lover
into the cradle of her hips and not realizing that she's done so.
Tamed.
So quickly.

They part and Abby takes stock of their positions
and determinedly does not tense up again.

"I love you,"
Ixazaluoh
says. "And I need you. I will never hurt you."

"As long as I do as I'm told?"
Abby challenges, feeling more confident the longer this goes on.
Ixazaluoh
still feels like flesh to her. And flesh
can be hurt back if she has to. She doesn't want to, mind, but she will if she
has to.