Authors: Jo; Clayton
Blue-green shrouds falling from a gilt bee-like insect splayed out against the ceiling. She spun around. In the narrowest wall of the wedge-shaped room, an arch closed by a heavy blue-green tapestry. That room. The old queen's bed. She could see once again the bulky decrepit figure of the ancient nayid ⦠aaaagh!
Moving stiffly to the arch she pulled the tapestry aside.
The guard outside stepped in front of her, her blue-green tunic rippling softly about her stringy form. When Aleytys tried to move past her, the guard shook her head and pushed her gently but inexorably back into the room. The tapestry dropped between them with a heavy finality.
The damper still jumbled her thoughts but her mind was adjusting rapidly to a hippity-hop style of thinking. “Well.” She rubbed her queasy stomach. “So I sleep in that hag's bed.” She shivered and looked around.
The room was a blunted wedge with the long side walls covered by ornate tapestries suspended on rings from long polished poles. Imposed on an intricate and lovely design of leaves and flowers woven of earth tones with accents of rose and violet, a line of rampant male figures cavorted through a wild erotic dance, their lurid, explicitly sexual forms contrasting grotesquely with the delicacy of the background.
Aleytys examined the figures with interest, her body heating a little as she noted the genital similarity to the men of her own species. Glancing over her shoulders at the tapestries, she moved to the wide end of the room behind the head of the bed.
When she pulled the tapestry out away from the wall she discovered that it was apparently a single sheet of glass with a greenish blue tinge that was cool and restful on the eyes. Outside she could see a walled garden. Neatly clipped grass. Gently rolling ground. Patches of flowers. Short, flat, slender umbrella-like trees ⦠mimosoids ⦠with delicate lacy foliage ⦠leaning gracefully over a small lively stream.⦠She gazed hungrily at the crystalline water leaping down the miniature waterfalls, dancing around scattered boulders, passing under the heavy, nearly horizontal limb of a rugged live oak. Her need for flowing water was almost as demanding as for hunger or sex. She felt along the glass, searching for a way into the garden.
“Hieno-nainen.”
Aleytys jumped and wheeled, startled out of her concentration on the stream. She moved hastily around the bed and stopped in front of a small brown figure that knelt, eyes fixed servilely on the floor, a pile of clean sheets and towels heaped neatly beside her. The diminutive female had neatly braided dark brown hair tied in loops over small ears, light brown skin flushing pink on the cheekbones, a coarse brown wrapper pulled tight emphasizing a dainty waistline with an elaborately embroidered sash-belt.
Abruptly conscious of her nudity, Aleytys pulled the lacy cover off the bed and wrapped it around her. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Aamunkoitta, hieno-nainen. I am hiiri assigned to care for these rooms.”
“You're not a nayid.” Aleytys eyed the full breasts thrusting against the wrapper. “You're mammal like me.”
The brown face flushed. Full lips thinned for an instant then the stolid face mask slid back. “I am hiiri, hieno-nainen.”
Aleytys tucked the cover absently around her. She hates them, she thought. I suppose she's a slave too. I wonder ⦠damn! If I could just.⦠She wriggled her shoulders as the itch intensified and her thoughts veered wildly until she disciplined her mind and seized hold of a remembered word. “Rooms?”
“Hieno-nainen?”
“There are other rooms here?”
“Yes, hieno-nainen.”
“Hah! Aleytys glared at the petite woman. “If you think that stupid act is fooling me.⦔
The hiiri gaped at her. “Hieno-nainen?”
Rubbing a palm that itched to slap the tiresome little creature, Aleytys sighed. “Never mind. Show me the other rooms.”
The hiiri rose gracefully to her feet.
“Wait.” Aleytys hitched up the trailing ends of the cover. “Where can I get something to wear?”
Silently the hiiri glided to the far side of the room. She reached up, got a handful of the tapestry and pulled it to one side, the rings clattering along the wooden pole. As she tugged more strongly, a portion of the hanging broke away from the rest, uncovering a section of wall pierced by another of the arches.
The hiiri reached up and spread her hand across a milky white square. A light came on, illuminating a small inner room.
Aleytys stepped on a trailing end of the bedspread and nearly strangled herself. Muttering impatiently she caught up a few more folds and padded cautiously through the archway.
Empty shelves, rods, hooks ⦠the old queen's clothing had been swept away except for a few shapeless tent-like garments hanging from hooks beside the arch. The hiiri slipped past her and frowned thoughtfully at these. She lifted a shifting mass of blue-green from its hook. “There is this.”
She shook the folds briskly and held the garment out to Aleytys. “The kipu must have put these here for you. If you want more, see that one, hieno-nainen.”
Aleytys sighed. After a minute's struggle she got the multiple layers of the shimmering blue-green silk over her head and slid it down over her body, letting the cover drop to the floor. She settled the brooches on her shoulders and shook her body so that the silken layers of material slid across her skin and settled into graceful folds falling to her ankles. She felt immediately less vulnerable and turned to the hiiri with a new sureness in her movements. “The other rooms?”
The hiiri bowed her head and left the closet. Farther along the wall she pulled the tapestry apart again, touched the light switch and waited for Aleytys to come up with her.
“This room is for your body's needs, hieno-nainen.”
A huge sunken tub took up half the room. An elaborate throne-like commode made of beaten gold studded with jewels had a matching fur-cushioned footstool. Aleytys blinked, then giggled. “My god,” she said, voice vibrating with awe, “I've never seen anything like this.”
“Yes, hieno-nainen.” The hiiri's bland colorless voice sucked away Aleytys' sudden high spirits. She looked at the small stolid face and sighed. The hiiri lowered her eyes meekly and moved away toward the other side of the room, passing behind the big bed close to the glass wall.
“Wait.” Aleytys ran lightly up to her, stopping in front of the clear glass. “The other rooms can wait. Is there any way out there?” She splayed her hand out on the glass and looked hungrily at the sunlit garden.
“Yes, hieno-nainen.” The hiiri pulled the tapestry farther aside, baring a section of glass with two milky squares set in it. She tapped her fingers on the topmost square and stepped back as a section of the glass slid rapidly and silently upward. “To close,” she said colorlessly, “tap there twice.” She pointed to the lower square, now more than a meter beyond her reach. Aleytys brushed past her and stepped onto the grass.
The sun was the wrong color, an egg-yolk yellow instead of red or blue, and it was single in the sky. She looked up, shaking her hair out, letting the gentle breeze play through it.
The grass was cool under her feet. It felt right, though the green was not so dark as she remembered. Even the water looked lighter, brighter under this yellow sun. Again she felt the abrupt disorientation as her body reacted to the wrongness of the feel. She felt too light, too cool, too.⦠it was hard for her to bring to consciousness all the things her body found wrong here. But the smells of the green growing things were just enough the same.⦠She closed her eyes and took a few steps farther onto the grass, letting the feel and the smell take her back in memory to the valley where she'd spent her growing up time. For a deep aching moment she smelled the sharp clean penetrating fragrance of the horans that grew along the Raqsidan, heard the laughing roar of that mountain river. She sank to her knees, tears of aching homesickness running unchecked down her cheeks.
She jumped to her feet, ran back into the building, stretched up, tapped the square, stepped hastily back as the glass door slid down. Shivering slightly she twitched the tapestry back over the glass, shutting out the disturbing view of green and lovely garden.
The hiiri was gone. The bed was made up, the cover restored, the pillow slip a crisp unwrinkled white.
Aleytys walked along the wall, poking gloomily at the tapestry, her mouth twisted into a self-mocking curve as she studied a prancing male figure with organ impressively erect. After a minute she turned away, clamping down the disturbing memories that threatened to send her spinning futilely down roads she couldn't retrace.
She paced nervously around the bed, feeling disoriented and purposeless. An inchoate urge to do something, anything, ate at her. The damper itched in her back and scrambled her thoughts so that, without some definite point to claim her attention, she grew dizzy with the erratic leaps her mind took. She clenched her fists and banged them against the glass wall, crying out in her anger and frustration, wanting to hurt something, to strike out at something, and at the same time being appalled at the rage and nervous irritation that blew her soul to shreds. She pushed away from the wall and flung herself around the bed, determined to go out the arch, guard or no guard.
The nayid male standing at the foot of the bed smiled at her and bowed gracefully.
Aleytys halted and stared at him, for a long horrible moment incapable of any kind of response to her presence.
“Parakhuzerim,” he said calmly, his voice lighter, more musical than a female nayid's. “May I serve you in any way?” The words were formal, but as he straightened he smiled at her again and his long feathery antennas swayed gently, sending the blues, greens, purples, reds rippling in iridescent giddiness across the crowning peacock eyes.
“What are you?” To Aleytys her voice sounded fumbling, mushy. She closed her eyes and clasped her shaking hands behind her. “How'd you get in here?” Her voice rose shrilly on the last word, shocking her with its touch of hysteria. She swallowed and said more evenly, “Can anyone who wants walk in on me?” A muscle beside her mouth began to twitch.
“I am ⦠Migru.”
She heard the slight hesitation. Although the alien faces were still too strange for her to read, the quick jerk of his antennas and the flush on his pale cheeks suggested a certain dislike for the name. I don't blame him, she thought. To be named Darling. How sickening.⦠Damn, if I just.⦠The damper kicked into high, sending her mind on a sickening spiral into chaos. It was a minute before she could see again.
Migru hitched up his short pleated kilt of blue-green silk and waited for her to say something.
“Migru,” she repeated, slowly regaining control of her mind and body. “Why.⦔
He bowed his head, the smile still curving beautifully chiselled lips. “I thought that you might perhaps have questions when you woke. A strange place. Strange things happening. I knew the kipu wouldn't think of this, so.⦔ He spread out his hands.
Aleytys lifted a hand to her head. “That was kind.” She looked around vaguely. “Sit down ⦠yes ⦠let's sit down and talk ⦠talk.⦔ She plucked at the gauzy curtains with fumbling uncertainty. “Sit down.⦔ She sank down on the end of the bed.
The nayid male stood quiet a moment, his mouth hardening for an instant. Then he walked quietly to her and settled on the bed beside her.
Aleytys shivered, his closeness waking confusing emotions in her. So long since a man sat beside her. Touched her. Held her. Loved her.â¦
“Is something wrong, Parakhuzerim?” He frowned, reached out to touch her, then hesitated, fingers a thread above her skin. “Are you ill?”
Rubbing her fingertips along the blue-green material covering her thighs, she said cautiously, “This is the old queen's room, isn't it.”
He caught her trembling fingers in a warm gentle hold. “The queen is dead, the queen lives.”
“Why did they put me in her bed?” She let her hand lie quietly in his, a hard cold knot under her heart melting slowly at the friendly contact. “I'm no nayid.”
“In a way.” He hesitated as if reluctant to go on.
“I don't understand.” But the muscles in her left thigh twitched painfully.
He dropped her hand and traced the outline of the wound. She could feel the heat of his fingertips through the silk. “You're Parakhuzerim,” he said quietly. “The guardian of the seed.”
She shuddered. The surge of rootless anxiety sickened her, woke a need to run. Far and fast. “Tell me,” she said urgently.
He hesitated. Then he cupped a hand over one of her breasts. “You're mammal. Your young are born out of your body.”
At this unexpected touch her body responded explosively. A light film of sweat popped out all over her skin and an empty aching filled her, then his words jolted her out of her forgetting. Born. She mouthed the word. Born. Gritted her teeth, clamped her eyes shut. Sharl. My baby. My son. She lifted her hands and let them fall back. Empty. There was nothing for them to hold.
Migru ran his fingers lightly over her contorted face. Wordlessly he stroked the taut quivering muscles. After a minute he lay back on the bed, pulling her down beside him. Even in her misery she felt his gentle fingers tracing lines of heat on her body. Her body surprised her once again with its eager response to the caresses.
She pressed herself against him, whispering urgently ⦠please ⦠please ⦠please ⦠Migru.⦠I need.⦠But she couldn't say the words.⦠He was a different species. In the terrible aching need of her body there was an embarrassment, a marrow-of-the-bone xenophobia that startled her immensely but locked her mouth.
But Migru seemed to know. His caresses grew more explicitly sexual. Aleytys shut her eyes and let her hungry body take control.
CHAPTER III
Gloriously relaxed, drifting in a semi-aware euphoria, Aleytys sighed and stretched. A single note chimed briefly, a pure lovely sound that broke the subdued night silence of the dark room. Startled, Aleytys probed at her head with trembling fingers. The smooth metallic threads of the diadem hadn't materialized but she heard a second ripple of notes scarcely louder than a whisper.