Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu (11 page)

Now as Inari ushered me into
our sleeping quarters I started to feel slightly nervous and
bashful.

‘Trust him.’
Hiko’s
words echoed in my head.

Inari pulled me gently into his
arms and pressed his lips against my temple.

“Look Amal, we don’t have to
share aruna if you’d rather not – you’re not a new har. But I just
thought that …”

I didn’t let him finish; I
pressed my lips against his. He looked surprised – pleasantly
so.

“I trust you,” I said. “I
want this to be the first time.”

The rest of the morning, and
much of that afternoon passed, without Inari or I even noticing. We
explored each other’s bodies. We shared aruna. He taught me how to
let go and truly surrender. He also coached me through my first
attempt as ouana. We lay together and dozed, revelling in the
closeness and intimacy, and then we did it all over again.

It was sometime in the
mid-afternoon that I woke up alone on the bed. I looked around the
tiny cubicle and observed Inari standing at the window staring out,
one arm leaning on the sill and the other braced on the casing. I
sat up.

“We’re going to do it,” he said
in a dreamy voice.

“We’ve been doing it since we
came up here,” I chuckled.

Inari laughed. “I mean you and
I are going to build a library. A Wraeththu library. The First Ones
are already building a city. It’s going to be a real city! A great
Wraeththu city! They’re organizing and mobilizing. They’re putting
together experts and a government. I’ve already mentioned that a
capital city needs a library and the First Ones agreed. We will go
and build the most beautiful library ever. It’ll rival the Library
of Alexandria – we’ll archive everything! We’ll have stone tablets,
old children’s books, government archives, technology books,
poetry, reference books and … and … romance novels.” He laughed.
“And we’ll document all of Wraeththu too, our poets and
story-tellers, our philosophers and scientists, our thinkers and
our dreamers – because we will have them!” He turned towards me.
“Close your eyes! Can you see it?” he entreated.

I closed my eyes and conjured
up the only library I knew. In my mind the grey forbidding building
became massive, the barbed wire and the security fences disappeared
and the once empty planters were filled with flowers. I could also
see the old fountain.

“Yeah, I can see it,” I
said. “Can our library have a fountain out front?”

Inari laughed. “Absolutely!
We’ll put a beautiful fountain outside our library. Believe
it!”

I closed my eyes again and in
my mind’s eye the fountain, which had fascinated me for as long as
I can remember, came to life as clear sparkling water bubbled from
it.

I sighed contentedly as I
pulled my consciousness back into the room. The years had changed
so much, and yet… not.

Inari still stood by the window
staring out of it, one arm leaning on the sill and the other braced
on the casing, but he was not naked now. Pity. Nor were we in a
cubicle in a repurposed human warehouse.

The fine leather of a divan
creaked beneath me as I rose and crossed to where Inari stood at
the window. I slipped my arms around his waist and rested my chin
on top of his shoulder.

From here at the window of my
well-appointed office in the administrative wing of Immanion’s
great Central Library I had an impressive view of the city. The
main library building looked nothing like I’d imagined it way back
then. It was white and gleaming: it rose, tall and airy, from its
surroundings, full of inviting spaces and light. Behind the library
rose the rooftops of the Hegemony administrative buildings where
the day-to-day running of most of Wraeththudom occurred.

Beyond those governmental
edifices rose the crowning jewel of Immanion, of all of
Wraeththudom in fact – Phaonica, home to not one, but two Tigrons
and their beautiful Tigrina. From here I could also see the
rooftops of the rest of Immanion spread out below; some with terra
cotta tiled roofs and some whose flat roofs had been converted into
shady garden oases.

“Did you ever think this was
possible?” Inari asked softly.

“Yes.”

“You did?” He sounded
sceptical.

“Of course. You told me it
was.”

“And you believed me? I didn’t
believe me!”

“I trusted you, and look… the
library! Exactly as you promised – I even got my fountain.”

We stood together in
comfortable silence. The view from my window was both inspiring and
comforting; Immanion was an impressive achievement. We Wraeththu
were no longer angry youths, fighting for survival and thinking
that we held all the answers. We had ascended the throne of power
and were aware of how little we actually knew; an age of wisdom had
dawned. We had weathered political storms, war, and uncertainty and
had come through more tempered and more mature. We had emerged from
the season of darkness into one of light.

Inari sighed contentedly. “Life
has been good to us, hasn’t it? We’re both blessed.”

“It has and we are.” I
agreed.

“I would feel even more blessed
if you were to take my place as the moderator for a tedious
afternoon of Maudrah poetry readings.” Inari looked at me
imploringly. “Refreshments will be served” he added hopefully.

“No dice,” I said flatly. “That
sounds dreadful.”

“No doubt it will be,” he
agreed readily. “I will heap the blessings of all dehara from every
corner of the universe at your feet if you’d go in my place.”

“Are you offering to go plead
the case for this year’s budget to the Hegemony committee in my
place?” I inquired dryly.

“Ouch!” Inari winced. “Is that
today? I’d forgotten. You win! Your meeting outdoes mine on the
‘ghastly way to spend an afternoon’ scale.”

He sighed stoically. “I suppose
Maudrah poetry does have a certain charm. It must. Somewhere. Oh
well. Although I shall suffer, I shall endure!”

“No doubt.” I grunted.

“And I have no doubt that you
will positively shine in today’s budget session!” Inari said as he
grinned and patted me on the back bracingly. “And afterwards, as
compensation for all your suffering, I will buy you dinner at The
Vivid Lily. Their seafood paella is beyond phenomenal!”

“Sounds like an excellent plan”
I said crossing to the door and holding it open for him.

“... and then” Inari continued
with a wicked grin “if you’re really lucky I might let you take me
home with you “

I laughed. “Seafood paella and
you? I am definitely living in the best of times.”

The Burned
Boy

Gwyn Harper

When I first encountered the
mutant, I thought only of revenge. They who called themselves
Wraeththu had ruined my life and made me what I was – a freak, good
only as a source of amusement for the crowds of fools who wanted to
feel better about their own insect lives. Then, none of us realized
that we were on the eve of something new and terrible, something
that would change the world irrevocably. The mutant was the
harbinger of that storm. Until I met him, I had no clue that our
most fervent desires and deepest fears, our belief in the inherent
goodness of the self, and the evil in others, can all be turned
around in a moment of blinding self-enlightenment. Here, then, is
my story.

It was summer. The circus had
just arrived in Wry, a nothing town of small souls plopped down on
a flat, dusty plain with mountains rising stark and blue in the
distance. We were madly setting up. Jake, the assistant manager,
handed me a bucket of water and a rag and sent me to clean the
grime off chairs in the newly-erected tent that served as the
boss’s headquarters. I went in and started working when I overheard
our owner, ringmaster, and scary-ass boss, Dr. Quintillus Sligo,
say something that cut right to the place where I dwell in
darkness.

“This mutant freak is gonna
save the circus,” Dr. Sligo said. I looked up and saw him waving
dramatically at the big-screen monitor mounted on the scaffold
behind him. He took a puff on his hookah. “I’m telling you, Tom,
people will pay big time to see this monster.”

“Even if true, we’re taking a
big risk with this one,” said Tom Houston, the business manager,
mopping a glistening brow with a tissue. A large man, he sat in his
chair like a sack of flour. “I mean freaks is freaks, but they’s
still people. This one isn’t, you know, human. It creeps me out to
even be in the same room with ‘im. It’s like, I don’t know, like I
can feel his charm buzzing around in my gut.”

“It’s called sex appeal. What?
Are you afraid you’ll succumb to his allure? Be tempted? Even
though you know it’ll fry your innards?” Sligo leered at Tom.

“Fuck you!” Tom spat in the
cedar shavings at Sligo’s feet.

It was hot under the canvas.
The roustabouts hadn’t set up the air conditioning units yet. I
pushed my long dark hair away from my sweating face, or at least
the half that could sweat, and peered through the smoky haze
created by Dr. Sligo’s hookah. I had an eerie feeling. Another
premonition perhaps. I’m prone to those and have learned to pay
attention, because often they signal something about to happen. I
had one shortly before my foster parents kicked me out of the
house; another when, after travelling for days in the back of a
truck, I saw the striped tents of the circus in the distance.

Dr. Sligo and Tom were playing
our latest commercial meant for the local channels and I watched it
over their heads. It was a lurid animé image of a nearly-naked
creature with a mass of spiky, white hair that writhed like snakes.
One half of its body was that of an overly-muscled man and the
other half appeared as a curvaceous woman with one large breast
filling half of a bikini top. It wore an obscenely tight pair of
spandex briefs, bulging with unknown horrors. Standing, it shook
its chains and roared, the sound like that of a klaxon. The
announcer intoned:

You’ve heard the rumours – that
mutants walk among us, coming at night, raping our young men,
converting them into beasts like themselves. Many have scoffed. Now
see the hideous truth for yourself: the Herm, a bizarre, mutant
creature, half-man, half-woman. One week only in Wry, Fayettesburg,
Lynly, and Red Rock.

Words scrolled up in a dripping
Halloween-style font:

Dr. Sligo’s Phenomenal
Phantasmagoria of Terrors and Delights

Shows at 8, 10, and midnight.
Go to Sligocircus.com

My mouth dropped. Could it
really be one of them? Right here? How had Sligo captured it? I
could not remember what the mutants looked like and had imagined
ugliness, but the artist had drawn a beautiful, androgynous face
with huge dark eyes framed by perfectly arched brows, a stunning
contrast to that mass of blond hair. Did the creature really look
like that? Hard to think of that as the face of pure evil. My gut
seized with the force of my desires, intrigued and enraged at the
same time. I couldn’t stop staring.

“You see that kid back there?”
Sligo was saying. “That’s our audience. Look at him, just drooling
over this freak. Remind me to send our promo department a bottle of
wine. The artist did a good rendering. You, boy, come here.”

“Me?”

“No, your twin over there. Yeah
you.”

Reflexively, I pulled my hair
over half my face and approached cautiously, as I always did when
walking into a new situation. The way my face looks makes any
encounter a source of emotional pain. Sligo took a drag from the
hookah and blew a smoke ring that expanded before hitting me.
Pwaft.
I coughed and Sligo laughed. Slim and elegant, he was
dressed in an old-fashioned tuxedo. His jet black hair was curled,
and his face painted white, with eye shadow and rouge that
exaggerated his elegant bone structure. He reminded me of a vampire
in the old movies. Appropriate too, as Dr. Sligo was a bloodthirsty
bastard.

“What do you think, kid?” Sligo
asked. “Would you pay money to see this thing?”

“Yes sir,” I said. It was no
lie.

“Tell me why. Don’t you know
these beasts could kill you in a most deliciously hideous way?”

“Um, yeah, I do. But that’s
what makes it so twitchy, ya know.” I pulled my hair closer about
my face.

Dr. Sligo was looking at me,
curiously. “I don’t remember you. Who do you work with?”

He didn’t remember me? The
bastard. “With Stubs Wheaton in the side show. Sir, you hired me
four months ago in Greeley. I’m Janus, the Burned Boy.”

“Oh right.” Sligo paused to
indulge in a coughing fit, then continued in a wheezing voice. “I
remember. We billed you as Janus, god of two faces. It’s a
completely brilliant idea. I haven’t caught your act yet. Let’s see
your other side. Move your hair.”

Dramatically I admit, I swept
my hair away from the left side of my face. People’s first
response, well, it always gives me a certain grim satisfaction,
while at the same time increasing my self-loathing. I am Grendel. I
am Medusa. No one could take that away. Tom winced, the usual
reaction. But Sligo, he kept his face straight. No emotion.
“Nasty,” he said. “I remember hiring you now. It was a wretched
day. A windstorm blew down one of the tents and a lion escaped.
How’d that happen to you?”

“When I was ten, some mutants
came up from the gutters, attacked my family. They killed my
parents, stole my older brother, and then threw me on some hot
coals. Or that’s what my foster parents told me, anyway. I don’t
remember it. Must have blocked it out.” I let the hair fall back,
covering my shame.

“You must come from a fair
piece away,” Tom said. “These folks hereabouts haven’t actually
seen any mutants. They’s just rumours to ‘em.”

“Yeah, I come from Mid-land,
Carmine City. I despise the mutants. I’d pay to see this one just
so I could spit at it.”