The Rose of the World (53 page)

‘I forgot. I am sorry . . . I forgot—’

Guaya sounded distraught, but Saro was still too wrapped in sensation to respond in any useful way. Instead, he gazed at her, feeling a little drunk, a little giddy. He had, indeed, it seemed, received a gift on that fateful day when he had visited the moodstone-seller’s stall, despite all the horror that had followed. He turned this new idea over in his mind. After all that had happened to him, all that he had done, it seemed impossible that anyone should care for him.

‘Guaya . . .’ he whispered, but she would not look at him. He reached out and touched her cheek, and the skin was hot beneath his fingers. ‘Guaya,’ he repeated, and now she met his eye, her cheeks burning.

‘I forgot,’ she said again. ‘I forgot you could see my thoughts.’ She ran a hand across her face as if she could erase them.

‘I thought you hated me,’ Saro said softly.

‘Hate you? I could never hate you, though it would be easier for me if I could.’

‘If you knew what else I had done—’

In response to this, she reached out and stopped his mouth with her hand. ‘No words,’ she said. ‘Not now.’ Then she leaned across and sealed his lips with her own.

Saro closed his eyes and let himself fall into her, and when she enfolded him he felt the embrace from inside and out: a most bizarre and intense sensation. Too intense. He pushed himself away and stared at Guaya, panting.

She blinked at him. ‘What? What is the matter?’

Saro shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It isn’t . . . it isn’t right.’

‘There is no right here,’ she said softly. ‘There is only us, and love and comfort.’ She cupped his cheek in her hand, a gesture of infinite tenderness; then she drew him against her again, and he found that not only could he not resist, but that he did not wish to.

How they both became naked he did not know – it was all too fast and too confused, for as long as they touched, he was both the nomad girl and himself and it was hard to tell where one finished and the other began. Was it his hands who unlaced her thin dress, or her own? Was it her hands who found the ties that held his breeches up and unknotted them, or his? He didn’t know: was beyond caring. In the end, it hardly mattered, for suddenly they were skin against skin. Then her legs were around him and he was inside her and they were both engulfed by a sea of beating blood and hot breath. For a few seconds he felt he was drowning and fought to separate himself, as if he feared he might lose himself forever in this hot tide; then a reckless insouciance which he knew was not his own picked him up like a great wave and hurled him into the current and he had no choice but to give himself up to it and allow it to carry him away.

It was impossible to tell how long they rocked together, drifting in and out of one another’s minds. He felt the penetration he made as a welcome invasion; then was back in his own skin, feeling how the girl beneath him clenched and pulsed. He felt great waves of affection wash around him, through him, over him. There came a moment when sea became flame, greedy and insistent; and then a coruscating wildfire which devoured everything in its path. He felt himself burned up, all he had been and all he had done reduced to ashes and cinder so that he found himself in a howling wasteland, devoid of emotion, devoid of sensation. Little by little, he became aware of details: how the juddering candlelight illuminated a strip of brightly woven blanket; how the grain of the wool was rough against his knees; how one of Guaya’s hands lay softly about his neck; how she looked up at him expectantly.

And suddenly he was back in himself again. And Guaya, though they still lay entwined, felt as separate to him as if they were two islands in an ocean.

He gazed at her, confused. Something of great magnitude had just taken place, something beyond their physical joining.

‘Well?’ Guaya lifted an eyebrow and one corner of her mouth quirked upward.

It was not the expression of an innocent, but of a knowing and powerful young woman.

Saro, out of his depth again, sought for the right words. ‘That was . . . wonderful, amazing.’

Guaya clicked her tongue. ‘No, numskull, not that.’ She paused. ‘Though it was very pleasant.’ She reached up and clamped her hands on either side of his face. ‘What am I thinking?’

Saro stared at her. ‘I don’t know.’ He frowned, concentrating. It was true: he didn’t. Suddenly it was as if a great shadow had lifted from him.‘I don’t know!’ he cried joyously. He hugged her, and she was a mystery to him, a wonderful, unknowable mystery. ‘Guaya, what have you done?’

She rolled out from under him, sat up and smoothed back her hair. ‘Taken back my gift.’

That confused him. ‘Your gift?’

‘You thought it was my grandfather who gave you the power to know others’ minds, along with the stone. But it was not Hiron Sea-Haar who did it. It was me. I don’t know why exactly – whether I meant it as a gift or a punishment.’ In the golden light of the candles her expression was earnest, determined. ‘You were so naive, you see. You knew so little. You looked at your brother and all you saw was a swaggering bully; you looked at your people and you merely saw ordinary folk. You never saw beyond the surface of things.’

Saro considered this. ‘Whereas my brother was a monster in the making, and my people were arrogant and cruel?’

Guaya nodded.

‘I killed him, you know, my brother Tanto.’ His eyes narrowed with misery. ‘I . . . I . . . choked him till he gave up his ghost.’

Guaya laid a hand on his arm. ‘Even though we nomads do not believe in the taking of even the most evil life, I would say that that deed was truly a boon from you to all of Elda, though I know it has exacted a high price from you. But you will have no more bad dreams now, I promise.’ She paused. ‘Shall I tell you why else I gave you my gift?’

Rather than waiting for his assent, she reached down and picked up one of the puppets from the floor where it had fallen, knocked off the bed in their haste. Its strings lay tangled and knotted around its painted limbs so that it was hobbled and hamstrung.

‘I saw how it was when you looked at me. All you saw was a precocious little girl, so clever with her puppets and her old songs, so outspoken with her adult opinions, and I wanted you to know—’ She bit her lip. ‘I wanted you to know me; and yourself. You are a good man: better than the rest, more sensitive, more intelligent. I thought you would take the gift as I meant it to be taken and use it for the good of others. I am sorry: it was a stupid and manipulative thing to do. I should never have done it. They do not call me the Puppeteer for nothing.’

Saro gazed at her, appalled. He had just shared his body with this girl – this
woman
– but with every passing second she was becoming more strange to him. He did not know how to feel: angry, relieved, betrayed, or all three at once.

He took a deep breath. ‘Have you any idea what it’s been like for me?’

Reluctantly, Guaya shook her head.

‘Everything. I saw everything. A single accidental touch in a crowd and I would know a man’s every thought – his guilts, his secrets, his hatreds, his loves; the last woman he slept with, the last meal he ate. I have felt men’s souls run through my fingers like sand. I have known the things about them they would not tell their dearest friend, their brother or their wife. I have been privy to dreams and nightmares and not known whether I would emerge from them as myself. I have felt men’s spirits slip away, and every time it was as if I died with them.’ He began to shake. ‘When I . . . when I tightened my grip around my own brother’s throat, I felt his terror and his loathing like . . . black bile in my veins, eating away at everything that was good in me. And still I choked and choked him and wished as he wished that I could die in his place . . .’ Now he stopped, overcome.

Guaya sat there mute, her hands pressed to her mouth. Tears stood in her eyes.

‘So for all that you say I am a good man,’ Saro went on at last, ‘I know that I am not. The gift you gave me showed me the worst of all that I share with others. I am no better than they: for I have killed and lied and hurt as have they all. You cannot care for me: no one can. I am not worthy of it. I should never have embraced you: never have allowed you to embrace me. It was wrong. My heart lies elsewhere—’

‘Stop, stop . . .’ Guaya’s tears began to fall now: so much, Saro thought inconsequentially, for the myth that the Wandering Folk wept only for joy. ‘That was a purer gift than my first and I will not have you spurn it. Love freely given should not be turned away or regretted. But my first gift was a terrible mistake and I have taken it back. No one should have to learn so much of human nature, I understand that now. There is a good reason why our innermost thoughts lie hidden, for no matter how well-intentioned we may be, there is always something bad – some darkness or selfishness or desire – that mars each thought and deed. The only way through life is to be able to ignore those taints, or how could we ever love or trust or hope?

‘I did not think. I meant to give you insight, not send you mad.’ She began to sob. ‘I wanted you to look at me and see me as a woman: but instead all I have done is to curse you and blight you for ever.’

Saro reached out quickly and took her hands between his own and it was immensely comforting to be able to make this simple gesture without fear of being deluged by another’s being.

‘Hush now,’ he said softly. ‘It is mended now. I forgive you.’ He paused, thinking; for in truth all was not yet mended by any means. ‘And the stone: can you remove the curse from that too?’

Guaya took her hands away from him, then shook her head. ‘Only the giver may take back their gift.’

Saro stared at her, his heart falling. ‘Then I must seek out the Goddess.’ But first, he realised, he would have to find the stone itself. The thought made him shudder.

A charged silence fell in the wagon then, to be broken only by one of the candles guttering down into a hiss of molten wax. A moment later, the doorflap rustled and a plaintive cry issued from the wagon’s steps.

Saro laughed. ‘I believe we have a visitor.’

At the sound of his voice, a small brindled head appeared in the canvas opening, followed by a lithe and brindled body. The kitten stopped suddenly, gave a yowl, then ran smartly across the wagon, leapt up onto the bed between the two naked humans, and then, as if some natural order had thus been restored to the world, set to grooming itself with purring complacency.

But seconds later, the kitten was followed by a second rather less serene or welcome visitor . . .

Driven by a mixture of curiosity and pique, Katla Aransen had quartered the encampment like a dragonfly hunting for prey. There was something she needed to ask Saro Vingo, and it was most infuriating that he was not at hand to answer her at once. In the middle of a group of wagons she came upon Dogo, Doc and Persoa sitting and drinking with a number of nomad men. Not in the mood to join them, she hung back and listened to their banter. Doc was teasing the little man mercilessly.

‘You had it off with her in the back of one of the wagons?’

Dogo puffed out his chest. ‘Yes, she chose me. Walked right up to me, she did, tapped me on the chest and crooked her finger at me to follow her.’

‘That’s just a polite greeting among the Lost People,’ Persoa grinned. For a moment, Dogo’s face filled with consternation and doubt. ‘I didn’t force her,’ he said quickly. ‘She had my breeches off before I could ask for a price.’

Doc regarded his comrade solemnly. ‘And seconds after that it was all too late, I suppose?’

‘Far too late.’ Slowly Dogo caught up with the implication. ‘Damn you, I wasn’t that quick. She seemed to like it well enough anyway. She wanted to know my name.’

‘So she could boast of being pricked by the famous Dogbreath of Dalina?’

‘She was most interested in my name, as it happens. Or I think she was. She said something I could not understand and then did this—’ He looked to the hillman and repeated the girl’s elaborate mime.

Persoa chuckled loudly. ‘She said that the breath of the dog is hot because it comes straight from the heart.’

Dogo beamed.

‘They think it a lucky thing: they believe that dogbreath cures babies of the croup.’

‘Aye,’ said Doc with a sardonic grin. ‘It knocks ’em dead.’

‘And she wouldn’t take any money from me,’ Dogo finished with a bewildered shrug. ‘I tried to give her some, honest.’

That made Doc guffaw. ‘Gave her plenty, eh, Dogs?’

Persoa smiled. ‘If they like you, they’ll accept no payment. They say the act of love is a shared pleasure and a gift from one person to another, and money spoils the giving.’

Dogo raised an eyebrow. Then he grinned from ear to ear. ‘My birthday, Winterfest and Lady’s Day have all come together, then!’

Katla frowned and moved away feeling uneasy. She wasn’t sure why the little man’s delight in this sudden prospect of bounty should unsettle her so, but it did. As she moved through the camp, one of the men stepped out of the shadows. He bobbed his head at her and flashed her a sharp, wicked glance, all white teeth and gleaming eyes. The rings and bones hanging from his ears rattled gaily as he moved, as did the pendants hanging against his darkly tanned bare chest.

‘Rajeesh, minna bellina.’

Katla inclined her head, not sure what he meant.

‘Ig heti Ballaro. Ev thi?’

That much she thought she understood. ‘Katla. Katla Aransen.’

The nomad said her name several times over with different emphases on the syllables. In his rich foreign voice it sounded impossibly exotic and strange. Then he laughed and caught her by the elbow.

‘Genga at mir, minna bellina Katla. Ig vili konnuthu-thi sare i luni.’

‘What?’ She had no idea what the words meant, but his gesture was unmistakable, as was the way he was now caressing her left breast.‘Get off!’ She extricated herself with a furious flourish and stood away from him bristling like an angry cat.

The man shrugged and tilted his head. He made an expression which suggested both sorrow and disappointment, then touched the skin above his heart and pointed away into the wagons.