Hienama (6 page)

There is a particular kind of har who
might as well have been incepted from a spiteful teenage human
female. Back north, a friend of mine used to call them ‘soume
shrews’. The phenomenon is mostly encountered, we observed, in hara
incepted quite young, i.e. below sixteen years. It is also seen in
some second generation hara, perhaps being a stage that they have
to go through after feybraiha, as they get to grips with the
different aspects of their blossoming sexuality. The attributes of
the condition are always the same: a particularly soume kind of
beauty, of which they are totally aware; a desire to manipulate
others through the power of their allure; a tendency to vengeful
grudges; disregard for the feelings of others; a helpless
attraction to hara in established chesna bonds that they seek to
destroy; an ability to become simpering and vulnerable at will
(usually used in devastating conjunction with the previously
mentioned trait); and finally, a core of tempered steel. I’m sure
you see the picture I’m painting here. You’ve no doubt met these
types yourself. And I’m equally sure you can imagine what’s coming
next. I’m talking about a har called Gesaril, who came to Jesith
two weeks after the winter solstice to train with Ysobi.

For a couple of glorious months
after Ysobi and I got together, I lived in bliss. Ysobi did not
move in with me, but we saw a lot of each other and spent the night
together around three or four times a week. We socialised a lot,
glowed radiantly, and became known as the epitome of what a perfect
chesna bond could be like. The only har who didn’t share in our
happiness, of course, was Zehn, but even he was gracious enough to
maintain the appearance of carefree friendship in public. I knew
that Ysobi would be taking on new students in the New Year, and
we’d discussed it. I can’t say I was overly delighted to think of
him in intimate situations with these as yet unknown hara, but I’d
worked hard at overcoming vestiges of human jealousy. Ysobi and I
were in love. We were unassailable. I’d always known what his work
entailed. I would be adult about it. If ever there was a case of
somehar painting a large red circle on his forehead, giving a gun
to his worst enemy and saying ‘I bet you can’t hit me,’ I was
it.

My training for now had slowed
down. Ysobi had taken me to Acantha, first level Ulani, and we
planned to wait awhile before I progressed to Pyralis. He had a
couple of other students lined up, and had told me that sometimes
he would have a bunch of hara to train together, then there’d be a
few weeks’ or months’ lull, when he’d take a rest. It had been
unusual I’d been his only student during my training.

We spent the winter solstice festival,
Natalia, with Sinnar and his family. They lived in a large house
set into a hillside a mile or so from the vineyard. Sinnar had a
chesnari himself and a young harling, which he’d hosted. That had
meant his chesnari, Tibar, had had to run the vineyard for a couple
of months, earlier in the year. Tibar came from the Shadowvales.
I’d not really seen the harling close up before, even though Tibar
sometimes brought him to the yard, and found the little creature
rather unsettling. In some ways, he didn’t look or behave like a
child, even though physically he was small. It seemed inconceivable
to me that Sinnar had hosted him; had grown a pearl in his body,
expelled it like a hen laying an egg. Altogether, the thought of
the process made me feel somewhat nauseous. I knew that hara had to
breed, because available humans for inception would eventually be a
thing of the past, but the idea of chesnari cosily making harlings
seemed too human for me, a flashback to an imaginary past.

When I got the chance, I told
Ysobi quietly about my feelings, to see what he thought.

He only said, ‘Harlings aren’t
that easy to make.’

Over dinner, Tibar revealed one
of the reasons (I think) that we’d been invited to share their
festival meal. A friend of Tibar’s back in his hometown had a son
who had passed feybraiha in the summer. He’d asked Tibar if the
renowned Ysobi would train this son to Brynie level. Tibar wanted
to ask Ysobi face to face, once Ysobi had had a bit to drink and
was in a good mood. The reason for this cautious delay in making
the request soon became apparent. Tibar was an honest har, and felt
obliged to tell Ysobi that his friend had had trouble with his son.
‘He desperately needs training, some self-discipline at least,’
Tibar said. ‘He’ll be a handful, Yz. But we’ll be paid generously,
both Jesith and you yourself. What do you say?’

Tibar perhaps didn’t know Ysobi as well
as I thought I did, but he was aware that our hienama couldn’t
resist a challenge.

‘OK,’ said Ysobi.

In the early hours of the
morning, we walked back to my house through the snow, arm in arm.
The world was silent and still and magical. It had reclaimed itself
and I felt glad for it. Wraeththu had ushered in a new age. These
fond thoughts were kindled because I’d had a lot to drink; I felt
nicely mellow. I reflected that I now had quite a high status in
Jesith. As chesnari of the town’s most prominent hienama, I was
invited to functions at the phylarch’s house. I knew Sinnar would
promote me at work. I felt as if life couldn’t get any better.

At home, Ysobi made us drinks,
while I went up to bed. The room was very cold, because the fire
had gone out hours ago, and I was eager to cocoon myself in
blankets. When Ysobi came into the room, there was a look I didn’t
recognise in his eyes. It made me feel strangely excited yet full
of trepidation. ‘What are you thinking?’ I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t
know yet. I enjoyed today, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Are you thinking about
that har Tibar told you about?’

‘No. Not at all.’ He began to
undress.

It was a show I would never
tire of, he was so beautiful. When he was naked, he shook out his
hair and my heart turned over. I noticed his ouana-lim was slightly
erect.

When we took aruna together, we
didn’t often bother with all the pyrotechnics of Ysobi’s
considerable skills. We found pleasure and contentment in a fairly
basic union, when we’d mingle our thoughts and our dreams. He
aroused me so much, I could reach a peak just by having him press
against me for a few minutes. And the peaks were, for me, an energy
expression of my intense love for him. I could often see the light
of them.

That night, after he’d shaken
out his hair, he brushed it back with his fingers and then wound it
into a long rope, which he knotted at the nape of his neck. I knew
what that meant. He got into bed and shared breath with me for a
few moments. He felt different, somehow driven and sure about
something. Presently, he began to kiss my chest and stomach, before
burrowing down the bed to the cave my raised knees had made in the
blankets. As he tongued me, I had the feeling this was all for a
reason. It was like the training again, precise and measured. For
some reason, this aroused me more. He spent some time tantalising
my third sikra, then began to use his fingers on me. He pinched the
nubs of the sikras till they hurt, but it was a hurt I craved. He
went deep inside me, opening me up, reaching for the higher sikras.
He was breathing very heavily.

‘Yz,’ I murmured. ‘What is it
you want to do?’

He didn’t say anything. After
what seemed like hours of agonising delight, when he’d manipulated
me to the point of release several times without satisfying me, he
finally lay upon me. I felt the petals on the head of his ouana-lim
pressing against me, hard as wood. He rubbed the first sikra for a
while, then progressed to the second. I was becoming lost in an
ocean of insane visions, which were like opium dreams. The waves of
sensation in my body were like waves of sound. I could also smell
them. I could see a row of stars before me, exploding suns, which I
knew were sikras. They pulsed with different colours. There were
five of them, but if I directed my attention slightly to the side
of them, it seemed there were another two, very faint, above them.
And above them was a golden egg of light. It made me think of a
dehar, some supernatural being.

Inside my body, the sikras were
like musical notes, or the strings of an instrument. I could feel
Ysobi playing each one, making the music. For a moment, I was back
completely in the physical. Ysobi was thrusting into me strongly,
but his whole body was shaking. Something was happening inside me,
something immense. It was more than climax. For a moment, I was
afraid.

Then we were in the eye of the
storm, and Ysobi was looking into my eyes. ‘There are more than
five sikras in the soume-lam,’ he said matter-of-factly, which
seemed absurd, as if he was back to teaching me. ‘The other two are
accessible only rarely, and for a special purpose.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want a pearl with you, Jass.
I’ve never done it. I had to see whether we were capable, and we
are. I can feel it, can’t you? The sixth sikra is about to open,
and beyond it lies the seventh, the cauldron of creation. But if
you want to stop now, we will. I’ll end it in the usual way. Will
you do this with me?’

I remembered, then, how I’d
often caught him watching Sinnar and his son that day. I remembered
how I’d felt about the harling, my distaste. And yet, here I was,
swooning in waves of aruna’s potent tides, and he asked me a
question like that. My world at that time was comprised of the most
glorious colours: I felt I loved everything in it. Would it be so
bad? I wondered. As a har, surely I should experience this
essentially female aspect of my being? Sinnar and Tibar would help
me, and I had Ysobi, who loved me. He had asked me to make what
was, for me, a big sacrifice. He had never done it with anyhar
before. I wanted to give him this thing, the ultimate expression of
what I felt for him. Not least, because I could.

‘Don’t end it,’ I said, and
pulled his head down to kiss him.

We stayed that way, lip to lip,
as he continued the process that would result in our son. The
sensation was not entirely pleasant, because the tongue of his
ouana-lim really had to dig deep into the flesh of the sixth sikra
to open it up. It was like a barbed arrow, and I was virgin there.
Then, it didn’t hurt any more and the fever dreams swept over me
again in a vast tsunami. I became nothing other than the cauldron
of creation, the heart of the universe where stars are born. The
seventh sikra, I found, was not in my body, but somewhere else,
linked to me. I was filled with a scalding stream of stars, which I
knew was Ysobi’s aren: a sparkling mist, which was my yaloe,
tumbled over them, enfolding them. Sparks shot out in every
direction. A soul was knitted into the raw stuff of creation; the
essences of our bodies.

We actually fell asleep, still
joined, and I dreamed I walked with our harling in a meadow of
yellow flowers. He introduced himself to me, said he was happy he
would come to us. Perhaps it was just a dream.

The following morning, Ysobi
and I hardly spoke to one another, because what we’d experienced
was beyond words. Also, I felt numb and shocked. We went for a long
walk in the afternoon, and then in the evening to Minnow and Vole’s
house, since we’d been invited there for a party. My whole body was
still thrumming with the aftershock of what had happened. I knew my
eyes were alight.

Minnow noticed something
different about me at once. ‘You look really strange,’ he said,
taking the gifts from my hands that we’d brought for him and his
brother. ‘Not bad, but really strange. Are you all right?’

We were in the living room,
which was lit by candlelight and warmed by an enormous fire that
blazed in the hearth. The air smelled of cut evergreen and spiced
wine. Around fifteen other hara were present. Others had yet to
arrive. But Zehn was there. I almost didn’t want to speak, but knew
I had to. ‘I’ve got some news,’ I said.

Conversations died down. I
don’t know what they expected. Now, I didn’t want to say
anything.

Ysobi took over. ‘Last night,
we made a pearl.’

There were several moments of stunned
silence, then Fahn came to us and embraced us both. He kissed our
faces. ‘You’re blessed,’ he said. ‘You’ll bring a wondrous new soul
to Jesith.’

I was overcome with a strange
kind of embarrassment. I wished Ysobi hadn’t said anything. I
couldn’t look at Zehn; he was the only one who didn’t come to
embrace and congratulate us. What could I say to make him feel
better? Nothing.

Later, once everyhar was
playing music, dancing or singing, and the wine and ale were
flowing, Minnow drew me into the kitchen. ‘I’ve got to hand it to
you, Jass,’ he said, ‘you’ve done wonders with Ysobi. Nohar ever
thought he’d go into a chesna bond again. You’ve revived him. I’m
sorry I doubted you.’

‘This will be weird for me,’ I
said.

‘You
are
totally OK with
it, aren’t you?’ Minnow looked concerned.

I answered too quickly. ‘Yes,
of course.’ It was hard to meet his gaze. ‘Well, it feels a bit
strange, I don’t deny it, but it feels kind of right too.’

‘At least harlings grow up
quickly,’ Minnow said. ‘Before you know it, he’ll be har.’

‘Hmm. I think I’ll need all the
help I can get, though. This wasn’t exactly planned.’

‘So how
does
it happen,
then?’ Minnow was always eager for intimate details.

‘Hard to describe,’ I replied.
‘You can’t do it with just anyhar. You have to be chesna, I think.
It’s a shattering experience. I haven’t got over it yet.’

‘I can tell. You look great,
though.’ Minnow sighed. ‘It’s a bit disorientating. I mean, I know
Tibar and Sinnar have done it, but not many others here in Jesith.
Some of us are beginning to take the plunge, obviously, really
embracing what it means to be Wraeththu. It’s brave of you, Jass.
It really is. You were a human male once.’