Moonstar (15 page)

Often, Rurik is portrayed as visiting her now ailing father one more time before she leaves forever. “I still do not forgive you,” she says, “but I would have you know again that I have always loved you as a faithful child, and I always will. I know you can't accept that I must be what I must be—but if you could only understand that this is the way that pleases me the most, then you might wish me well. All I ask, my father, is that you would wish me joy.”

“I have always wished you joy, my son. I thought I was giving you joy when I . . . helped your Choice. I was wrong—because the shape of your love now is more offensive to me than if you had gone Rethrik. The knowledge that I made you into this is a stench within my nostrils. I have tortured myself with hate and pity far worse than any you could heap upon me.” And then, whispered very softly, “I would have loved you, Rurik, had I not feared you more. I thought, I thought—if you were me, I would not have to fear.”

And Rurik, whispering too, “You loved yourself too much, my father. That was your only fault. That's why you wanted me to be as you. And . . . you were not unworthy of that love; you should be proud of who you are.”

“Everything I know is ruined. I wish you better, son. May you never know such pain as mine.”

And Rurik—standing there, loving—could not help but feel sorry for her parent so small and shadowed now. But even so . . . she still could not forgive. And in that, she knew her father's pain as if it were her own. She kissed her once, an homage to the past, and then turned and left her child-home forever to sail off with her beloved.

There is no historical record of their ever being heard of again, and the best guess of anyone at the time is that their craft, which could not have been well built considering their lack of skill, broke up in the strong equatorial currents. However, for many years thereafter, stories continued to come back to the island of the marvelous exploits of the two wild Dakkarik who rode a silver trimaran, one that skimmed across the wrinkled waves swifter than the gulls before the wind. Although these stories are generally regarded as wishful fantasies, more and more they have become incorporated into the myth—probably because most of them are just too good to leave out. Many of the more imaginative adventures have used the legend of Lono and Rurik as a starting point, as motivation to get them out onto the open sea where they can ride the sea-worms, debate the Voices of the Winds, brave the demons who still walk the bottom of the sea—ghosts from the time Before—and finally climb up to the golden-pink cloud castles of the sky. Most of these latter fables are rooted more firmly in wonder than in fact, but all of them bring Lono and Rurik to the same wistful conclusion:

They are pursued by a savage demon-storm, a child of Dakka, a soul-sucking harbinger of chaos, a wrenching elemental force, scouring and grinding across the world with wind and hail and sand; the hurricane chases the two lovers across the wild seas until, finally, a giant sea-otter, perhaps the Great Otter herself, climbs aboard their raft one silver evening and directs them toward the north and west, then disappears beneath the waves again to the safety of her otter home. Doing as the otter bid, they sail to the north and west, where they meet the goddess Reethe, who wraps herself up in the robes of the swirling storm-tossed sea and rises up to save them; it is told that she was obligated to Lono and Rurik for any number of previous favors, which always vary from telling to telling. She welcomes Lono and Rurik to her breast and leads them to safety through the warm and gentle portal known as death.

At first they are afraid—to seek escape by dying? They cannot comprehend this choice; but Reethe speaks to them softly and reassuringly. While the Dakkarik storm howls angrily around them, she shields them within her arms and tells them of the holiness of caring. “Of course, all life is ephemeral,” she says. “That is why there's love—to give it meaning. If life could last forever, there would be no need for such a strange emotion, because then all things would be possible and eventually everything would happen; but because there must be death, then only the very finest things must be allowed to be—and that is love; and when it passes into the night, that makes it holier still, because each love is thus unique, never to be duplicated in this world again.” And then she tells them this: “You can accept the definity of life, or you can fear its end; but accepting what you are will make you cherish every moment that you have, and accept its ending as a tribute to it, as one breaks a glass after a toast so that it will never be used for any lesser purpose afterward. This is the gift I offer you, Lono and Rurik, that you shall end together, so that neither shall be left alone to mourn her loneliness—few other lovers ever are so fortunate.”

And now the lovers pause to think—the alternative is to flee before the storm again, and each will die alone, afraid. They touch each other's hands, their cheeks, their eyelids and their lips, and whisper, “I would die within your arms, and in a peaceful way. You have given me much joy in life; let it end in a fitting manner.” And Reethe enfolds them then and takes them with here down into the bottom of the sea. And it is told that they did die within each other's arms, and that it was as gentle and beautiful as if they were just dropping into sleep's sweet embrace.

If this myth of Lono and Rurik seems unhappy in its resolution, that is only an illusion. It is a joyous tale in that it allows Lono and Rurik to die as they had lived—within each other's arms. Perhaps this is a wistful thought, but could you ask for better for your own lover than to end with her? Let this story serve as recognition that all love stories are inherently sad, because a love story is not complete until the ending of that love has been detailed. All loves do end sometime, some when one partner or the other grows tired, others through the vagaries of circumstance, and many when once partner or the other dies. The love of the survivor is always a good measure of the strength of the relationship and it is this that gives the happy quality to the overall sadness of Satlik passion; it is happy in its recognition of the timelessness of love itself, in the fact that such joy is free for everyone to share, if only they can open up their hearts. And in that, such stories are happy ones, happiness transcending any sadness, because we share the joy that two of us have learned how to touch the greatest source of power in our world. Love, for each of us, is a reaffirmation of our ability to flow with the holy currents of humanity. It is the noblest of human passions, and it is only through its expression that one can be complete. If we are individuals, we are still reflections of a larger truth, and when we can reflect that truth within ourselves as radiance and light, then we become the best that we can be.

Such is the final lesson of the love of Rurik and Lono. And every time we tell it again, it lives on. They may have passed into the night, but as long as people share their story, their love lives on forever.

“Option was an experiment in social relationships. It was well-intended, but like all social experiments it would teach more through its failures than it ever could possibly teach by its successes.

“If that sounds bitter, then perhaps it is. I would have much rather been one of its successes than failures.

“The problem with social experiments is that you can't flush the residue down the drain after you've found the hypothesis unworkable. The residue is human lives.

“Who cleans up after the experimenters are through in the lab?”

In the evenings, Jobe would wander down to the arcade, where a screen had been mounted under a thatched roof with roll-down walls of silk-net to keep out flying insects. While others might come here for amusement, or for education or for news, Jobe came because there was nothing else she wished to do. It wasn't that she wished to be here; it was just that there was nowhere else she wished to be and here at least was a place to be while she wasn't being anywhere. Everyone else was paired off; Jobe still slept alone. So she watched the flickers on the screen, which was a kind of sleeping alone too.

Nyad had told her she was beautiful; in her refusal to believe it, Jobe made herself unbeautiful. Here, beautiful meant sexy—and that was dangerous. Sex was something you did for release anyway, not for satisfaction. A messy business at best. The screen was cleaner. The blue-gray flicker in the dry and windy night became her life at Option, a projection of what she wished she could have had, but wouldn't dare to take—instead of dancing, she sat and disliked music. Instead of singing, she listened and disliked singers. Instead of loving, she watched the images of people loving, and decided she was offended. The screen dazzled pictures into her skull and created alternate realities; pleasanter ones because they were flat with simple images, clichés and stereotypes—they were easier to understand and manage.

These images and sounds were only shorthand symbols, intended to suggest a more rounded, three-dimensional world behind them—but the symbols were projected across the wall three meters high and in colors so intense and garish, they were too rich to be real. They worked too well, they were too powerful and they became more real than the things that they were symbols of. They became Jobe's reality. Flat and garish. Artificial.

The screen was saying something, “—but the real thing can't be expressed in images; it can only be expressed—and never in symbols, only in truth.” Jobe nodded at the words. Yes, how true, how true. The screen enlarged the horizons of perception; it was a magic window. But when she moved with hand outstretched as if to step into it, she discovered that a screen is just a wall and not a window. Not a window at all. Her hands would bump against its oily surface without touching, but the message to her eyes was louder, more intense. And besides, the message to her eyes was the one she wanted to believe. The moving-mural shadows were a nicer set of truth—much better than the one that lurked behind her in the hills, calling her in gross, unlovely ways: “Hey, Jobe! There's a bed up here with your name on it. Come on up! The loving's fine. Get your legs up in the air, girl! You'll love it!”

But, no—Jobe had to reject that reality. It was too dangerous. It was too real. You could get hurt. You would have to deal with other people. Worse, you might have to . . . care about them. You could get hurt. If they didn't care about you.

Yes, the projected mosaics of glimmering colors, images of almost-truths, stretched across a wall of whitewashed rice paper on a bamboo framework, those mosaics were much safer, much more comforting. Not involving, not at all. Safely distant. If they started to disturb her, or even rippled through her consciousness, through the wall of her steady dazing, she could walk away from it—she couldn't do that with the other, not while impaled to a bed with someone plunging into her.

That involved her lying flat on her back while some immature and inexperienced sister-friend who thought she was going to be Dakkarik—or wanted at least one chance to taste the way of Dakka and prove to herself that she didn't really want that Choice—pumped in and out of her, rocking with a frantic beat, back and forth, sprawling hard across her, sometimes slamming painfully (sometimes it was hard to breathe), sometimes squirting something warm, sometimes far too soon and sometimes not at all, pumping at her till she chafed, sometimes even burned. If only she could do it right, she thought, or get enough, or—sometimes there was something. The beginning of a tickle—yes, she knew what orgasm was; she'd had them, infrequently. The failing wasn't all her own; she enjoyed sex, she even liked it—it was people she could not deal with.

Most of the Dakka ones were growing alien. That was part of her dismay. She'd thought that adulthood would be the end of childhood problems—and it was; the little problems shrunk in magnitude—and were replaced by larger ones, the problems of encroaching maturity, the shapes of Reethe and Dakka; and Jobe couldn't comprehend the Dakka-ness of Dakkarik! She couldn't be a part of it, even though that was to be her Choice. And because she couldn't understand the ways of Dakka-Choice, she became uncomfortable—and using her discomfort as a mortar, she built a wall of sullenness between herself and the thing she longed for. She couldn't stand to have a Dakka touch her, as if that person were enjoying something she could not. And she couldn't see or share the other's joy. As if that person had achieved a magic she would never know. What was it in them that made them able to be Dakkarik? Why should they experience the magic and not herself? She was Jobe—she was the heroine of the story of her own life; she was the center of her circle—she was the one around which her universe revolved; why should the magic be deprived from her and given to those clumsy others who could not understand the gift that they possessed? She could understand it—if only she could understand it!

Sex was—well, Reethe would worship and console Dakka for her imperfections. Reethe would share herself with Dakka, taking Dakka into her. Reethe would hold Dakka inside of her and share her holiness with her flawed lover—she would touch her lover's heart and feed upon her growing strength, giving Dakka the knowledge of the magic of perfection for the one bright flashing moment of ecstatic wonder when all ego and identity become lost in larger whirlpools of the flows of Holy Tau. The magic happened when you were a part of the vast flows of space and time, when you were a part of all life's greater moments. That's what it was supposed to be. Reethe gave Dakka knowledge of perfection, and in experiencing Dakka's ecstasy at having all the pieces fit, achieved it for herself.

But Jobe couldn't achieve her own perfection—and she'd tried, she really had. Was she doing it wrong? She couldn't be—she had the motions right, and the feelings too; at least she thought she did. Or did she? It was said that Reethe cannot achieve perfection until she gives it to her Dakka—

She did it. She liked it even. A little bit. She couldn't help but like it, even though she didn't like it, not inside. That is, her body liked it, but she didn't, not in the place she really lived. But she did it because she didn't know how not to. She wouldn't say no because she hoped for her miracle, yet didn't know why she should be saying yes. But she had not yet . . . not yet . . . not yet something. She knew that it was incomplete somehow, something lacking—in herself or in the act. Prefer ring to believe that it was something lacking in the act, she kept trying to achieve it—but she could not identify what it was that was missing, only that it wasn't there. If she could just . . . grab the feeling that each act of sex seemed somehow to be reaching for, then she'd know exactly what it was that she'd been missing because then she would not be missing it anymore, would she?