The Art and Odd Thoughts of Cyranos Demet: March 2011

Pilgrim: 1932

“But SQ, it is so far away.” Indy was not happy, not at all.

“It is, Indy. Far away is where I need to be right now.” Sundown wasn’t happy either, but then that wasn’t a new state of affairs.

“Is there nothing I can say? Nothing I can do to convince you to stay in France? There is goodness here as well, you know that.”

Sundown shook her head. Indy really didn’t know, and she didn’t want her to. Where she’d been, what she’d done, no. Indy didn’t need to suffer that. “There is, Indy, of course there is. But I have trouble seeing it, I’ve seen to much sad and bad in the same places. I need to go, Indy. I need to go where it’s quiet. I want to go listen for God.”

Sundown’s face was firm, she’d made her decision. Indy could tell. She sighed, and tears overflowed. They’d always been there for each other, since that first summer before SQ had chosen her name, when she was simply the quiet one, an unknown girl found left for dead, taken to a convent to heal if she could or die in whatever peace the good sisters could give her. Now she was leaving and nothing would sway her. Indy held out her hands, opened her arms and took her sister into an embrace.

Sundown was stiff in Indy’s arms. It wasn’t the moment passed her by, far from it. She loved Indy more than any other left living, but things put themselves between her heart and Indy’s. There were things she might do, give clue to, without noticing them herself. She was frightened to allow the moment to grow on her, frightened her habits would wound what Indy offered. So she refused the embrace, gently, and took Indy’s hands, turning them palm up to receive a kiss on each before pressing them to Indy’s face. She did her best to smile.

“I’ll be back, Indy. I’ll be back,” she said, and then she broke. She would fold in half if Indy were not against her, the emptiness of her soul felt so severe. She pulled Indy into a hug with all her strength, burying her face against her shoulder. Indy returned her hug, strong arms holding her ribs, the strength of her love making the emptiness bearable for the moment.

They clung to each other while the breath in their lungs lasted, neither could draw another. When Sundown turned to flee, hoping to be out of sight before what Indy gifted her in the last moments should fade she heard Indy call out from behind her.

“May God find you quickly Sundown St. Marie that you return to me all the sooner.”

Around the corner Sundown stopped, she had to. The street ran east and west, the rainbows of sunshine through her tears was blinding.

*** *** ***

The coach was warm in the afternoon sun, the rocking motion hypnotic. Sundown was snoozing in her seat wishing she could awaken. There were voices in her dream she didn’t like and the motion, the clacking of the rails brought other things to disturb her. The rhythm, so close, the clacking lower pitched but the same tempo, the smell of close air and other bodies and the worn leather of the coach all had their place. She wanted to awaken but could not. The voices denied her permission.

The afternoon wore away, the angle of the sun changed and the ground began to rise. The long run across the flatlands ended and as the train began to climb Sundown finally escaped her dream. It was so often like that, sleep as a thing to escape. She sat up and straightened herself, looking about to see what might be seen.

She’d changed companions while she’d slept. The businessman was gone, in his place sat another man, younger and not so well dressed, a large notebook beneath his arm as he snoozed. The other seats of the compartment were empty, apparently she’d slept through a stop. Beyond the window the Alps loomed on the horizon, beyond them Italy and Rome, her first layover still many hours away. She turned to study the man, hardly more than a boy she realized on closer inspection.

Set him as perhaps twenty two years, thin after the manner of one who hasn’t eaten well nor labored that he might eat more. His fingers were long and delicate clutching his notebook, obviously the thing of most value in his life. The thick leather bound volume had cost more than the clothing on his back. He looked way worn and weary, a soldier of the heart returning from the battles. Probably a poet, she concluded. There were so many of them now, children grown up in the shadow of the great war.

Perhaps half an hour passed before the young man stirred. On opening his eyes he found his gaze met by Sundown, looking at him with a steady glance. She’d heard it said the eyes are the windows on the soul, it was personal experience the windows were most clear in the first moments of awakening before thought had time to draw the blinds. He flinched and Sundown recognized the fear as he drew the notebook in front as a shield. Clearly they shared things in common. She broke the gaze, and offered a nod with a soft smile.

“Hello, was it a good sleep?” she asked.

He blinked, and stretched. “As good as can be had on a train,” he replied with a yawn. “There is something in the motion, so easy to sleep, so hard to rest.”

“I do so understand,” Sundown said. “I was trying to escape from a nap for I don’t know how far. It was dreadful.”

“Yes, you were asleep when I boarded,” he said. “I can testify to a hundred kilometers before your nap claimed me as well. I am Roland,” he said, bowing his head a trifle.

“I go by Sundown among my friends,” she replied.

“I’m flattered,” Roland said.

“Flattered? Why?”

“That you would introduce yourself by the name your friends call you. It is a trust, to be offered to a stranger.” He smiled, a bit tentative and vulnerable, and Sundown marked his teeth were very white.

“You are a poet, are you not?” she asked, her smile welcoming warm in return.

“At times, other times a philosopher. I find little of value in the material, certainly not beyond the utilitarian. I am a seeker, I search for truth in our little trifling with life.”

Sundown nodded. She’d been right, all that remained were details. “What truths do you seek?” she asked. “In what manners have you given chase?”

Roland shook his head, and looked down for a moment before he answered. “None I should think, seemly, to discuss with a lady such as yourself,” he said, and Sundown marked how he compressed himself without moving. Questions brought contrition without thought in him. She wondered, and put her wondering to a test.

“Roland,” she said, and when his eyes were on her she bowed her head, palms turned up and wrists pressed together, her arms held tightly against her waist. After the appropriate moment she lifted herself, and found his eyes very wide. “Oh, yes, Roland. Oh, yes. We can speak of anything, or those things if you wish. You are a seeker and I a refugee. Fate has thrown us together for a few hours, perhaps we have things to share.”

They spoke of many things as the evening drew near, he made an art of seeing though all light to the underlying darkness. He read her some of his poems, the work of a young writer whose skill with words struggled to capture his sensitivity. She did him the compliment of honest tears, several of his passages touched her with a caress of flame and their caress was welcome relief to the emptiness as they cauterized the surface with companionship. Silence fell with the night as the train labored slowly into the mountains.

For the first hour of darkness neither spoke, they put no light in the compartment. Sundown found the silence demanding. A desire, almost a compulsion was growing with the night that would not be turned back. She’d left her home, the last of the people with whom there was caring, hoping to shatter the foundations of her suffering. In the end she took the demanding for a sign. If it pressed so hard it needed to be said, to have its moment. Two years of her life were a blank to all who knew her, to none had she spoken of that time. Roland was an opportunity, perhaps a gift she realized. He would listen, and not judge. From his poetry it was clear he’d been so close himself, he had empathy and could stand for her confessor. He would be gone with the dawn, and she’d not begrudge him what she said to add to his collection of elegant shadows. Even in the dark, and to a perfect stranger, it took a great deal of effort to make a beginning.

“I came to find the light, three-leather lash was my favorite,” she began, giddy with the effort of recollection, speaking to the dark ceiling as she shivered. “My master had skill with it, it did not bite so deep as not to heal rapidly. I could bear it as often as every day if he were pleased with me and varied where it fell.” There, it was open. It was not so very bad, not really.

“Those were my good days, Roland, those were the good days. I could endure it in silence, but master would often be kind and allow me tears. I relished those tears Roland, the ones he allowed me. I would do, and did do, anything for them. I was so terrified of them, but I craved them as well. Can you believe it, Roland? I have trouble believing it, myself, when I look back and say the good days were when he would apply the little lash to every part of me. He’d not strike so hard as to make me scream, so long as I didn’t scream he’d forego the gag and he’d let me cry, and I thought it was good. I bartered with him, the things I would do that he take his time to give the lash delicately so I might have time to feel my tears. I thought I thought if I endured long enough those tears would wash away what I feared.

“When that war stole my husband, when God took Jean Luc from me I believed with all my heart God would not let tragedy take anymore from me. I cried all my tears then, I used them all each and every one. But I was wrong, so wrong, because when Pierre and Marie died, when their little bodies burned to cinders with the influenza I had no tears left. I couldn’t mourn my children, Roland, I’d spent all my tears on their father. I couldn’t, I can’t forgive myself that failing. My master was a cruel man, all such men are, but he had a kindness in him as well. He knew why I’d come to him, he provided me what I needed. Sometimes he would spend hours with the little lash to give me back the tears I couldn’t find by myself. Oh, there were times I’d displease him, ask to much and he’d use the heavy lash and truly flog me. More than once he threw a bucket of water in my face that I be awake for the remainder of what he deemed appropriate. But they did not happen all that often. Those, those were not good days.

“And strange as it sounds, Roland, those were the times master was most tender towards me. When I could do no more than moan, when I couldn’t speak, when I whimpered trying to move, that was when he could be tender to me. You see only then could he truly take pleasure in me. He’d touch me and it hurt worse than the lash to have his hand on me. He’d not ask anything of me save access and that was so much worse than his lash, Roland, so much worse. He’d be gentle when he’d take me after a flogging, it was the only time he was gentle with his sex. He’d tell me, he’d tell me soon enough I’d leave him, that soon enough I’d allow I’d done my penance and leave him. He said that to me over and over while I laid on the back he’d just flogged to let him knock at the door of my womb. I’d try, Roland, I’d try so hard not to cry to being on my back, I’d try so hard not to scream when the motion of his thrusts worked the skin where I’d been flogged. I’d try so hard not to, but I always did, and he’d go slower then, with more deliberate force, enjoy me all the more and keep telling me I should leave him. It took me so long to believe him.

“I, I’ve tried so hard to put the fault him, to tell myself he did it to me, but I can’t. He only gave me what I asked for and I stayed to ask again and again because without what he gave I’d never have survived what I was hiding from. I knew, I knew I wasn’t strong enough to face it full on, not then, it would have driven me to suicide. Without him, without that cruelty those I love would have been lost to me for all eternity not just a lifetime.” She paused then, she had to, to speak of such awoke the memory of the flesh and the pain was very real. A few minutes later, when she’d mastered the pain, she forced herself to speak out the rest, to set those words on the scale with the others.

“He was true to his word, Roland. When I wanted to leave he only looked sad and said he’d need to find another who needed his services. By then I’d come to understand he was far more damaged and lonely than I. He couldn’t leave what he was. I could but he couldn’t. He knew what he was, and he hated it almost as much as he hated those of us who used him for it. I hope, I hope death finds him soon, takes him in his sleep. It is what he wants so badly.”

Sundown had made her confession to the ceiling. When it was over she sighed and for a moment, just a moment, she wished she could again feel that exquisite burning slowly building from back to buttock to thigh until all thought had given way to it so the narcotic sensation of relief from having spoken of it would be tempered. She didn’t put her head down until she felt Roland’s head in her lap, his hands clutching at her hips as he knelt at her feet weeping.

“You too, Roland?” He nodded, she lifted him to sit beside her.

“Did you seek it often?” she asked, speaking in a matter of fact tone as she turned him, taking him into her arms that she might cradle his head against her.

“Often enough, and to much the same reasons,” he finally managed in a choking whisper. “I cursed God, Sundown, I cursed God himself for the death of my father and when the plague took my mother I could not convince myself it was not my own curse come calling.”

It welled up in her, overflowed her eyes to rain onto his face. She could find no sympathy for herself, but she could for him and so it was for him also. For most of the night they took turns holding each other, the one who remembered silent, the other weeping for the one who was silent. They returned to their seats before dawn and the morning porter wondered that they looked so pale for all that they were smiling at the new light.

They parted company on the platform in Rome and never saw or heard from each other again. They embraced each other and several young mother’s turned their children away. As their hands passed down each other’s back they writhed, beneath the hands it all lived again for a moment, and then was gone, the memory carried by the flesh purged and silenced by the hands of a stranger.

What a strange fortune Sundown thought as Roland vanished into the crowd, to find him just at the beginning to this journey. She gathered her things and set out in the opposite direction. A cab took her to her lodgings where she laid on the bed for several hours in that state between sleep and awake, aware and dreaming at the same time. Having spoken of it, having given it to words in the hearing of another she found it was easier to think of those days, easier and harder at the same time. When the hours, sometimes days, spent in pain had been a secret within her they were not so real as now, she could turn her mind away from them easily, turn her mind away from the reasons, leave the reasons behind the pain and so be hidden as well. But no more. It had taken a decade, but they were separate now, her masters’ lash and the lash of fate and she could, indeed she had to, treat with them separately.

When the day had aged a bit more she bathed and dressed and went out seeking supper. From the circle of friends in Paris she knew the names of several places, had the cab deliver her to the closest. She only knew a smattering of Italian but the waiter spoke passable French and so she had no trouble ordering herself a fine meal. She was alone but seated at a table for two. Several strangers approached her, two women and one man, but she declined them. Fortunately all accepted her desire without ill will. The last, a woman seemingly in her mid years, spoke to her in a kind manner saying “My dear, we are of the same kind, this I know. Take the time of your thought and if in the later hours you desire company you may find me here,” and left her card on the table bearing a telephone number and an address.

Sundown turned the card in her fingers, looking at the woman across the room. She was seated at a table with four others, obviously alone for the night. They were of about the same age although Sundown did not look her years. Her companion for the past decade had been a woman of much the same kind. Sundown wondered if the two were acquainted, if this woman had been told of her and so had come to make herself known. That would be so much like Lee Ann, to set her free having opened a way for her elsewhere. She slipped the card into her purse.

Through the meal Sundown continued to wander in, and wonder at, the current state of her life. Lee Ann had set her free, had turned her out after ten years. She’d done it almost suddenly, Sundown was certain she’d found another more attractive. For a month she’d haunted Lee Ann’s steps, but in that month she took but three others home, and none stayed more than the night. The great majority of the time Lee Ann slept as alone as she. Alone she’d been then, and alone she remained. The aloneness had become a burden, and then an aching, and then a torment far worse than any her master had ever administered. In retrospect the bindings, the lash, they had been so temporary by comparison. She finished her meal, and outside the building looked about at the city feeling herself a ghost sentenced to wander among the living. In the distance the dome of St. Peters caught her eye, and her feet took the direction without any intent of hers. One direction was as good as any other, when one is a ghost wandering.

She walked the streets slowly, hardly paying any mind to those about her. Several looked a her, a woman alone walking poor streets in a strange city. She didn’t fear, in truth those who looked on her and entertained dark thoughts should have feared her. One particularly vulgar and burley man had blocked her way, she’d stopped to look him in the eye and smile. It only took a second before he perceived he was confronting an angel of death and stepped aside asking her pardon, which she granted graciously.

It had been a part of the thing between she and her master to maintain what Jacque had taught her. He was not as skilled as Jacque, but still, he was a good partner. It served to keep her in practice and was for him a delight. Flushed with the heat of combat he could sometimes respond to her without giving pain, a thing rare for him. Often the sex that accompanied their practices carried a passion beyond fierce, a coupling of warriors. In truth she could have mastered him when she didn’t suffer to his other ministrations but she never made the mistake of letting him perceive that. She set herself as his true equal on the mat, his equal in the carnal combats to follow. It had been the good thing between them, those afternoons. A good thing she thought, recalling them as she walked, but still, an alone thing no matter the heat and sweat and thrashing orgasms.

Buoyed for the moment on that memory she turned for the hundredth, thousandth time to her last night with Lee Ann. Her feet carried her into the basilica before the train of thought ended, but she hardly noticed. That night, what was there in that night she’d overlooked?

Lee Ann was an American, she’d always been a dominant lesbian who’d moved to Paris to find a place where she could win acceptance. She was certainly kind, and sensitive, but it was very much part of her to take command, never more than she had that night. That night she’d made it a point to take Sundown beyond any pinnacle ever. She’d done what she’d never done before, nor any hint of similar, she’d tied her between the head and foot of the bed and whipped her many, many strokes with a belt, the leather very light and wide that it do no real harm. It was nothing, nothing compared to her master, but coming from the hand of Lee Ann it was enough to grant tears. When her tears were real Lee Ann released her in stages as she made love to her with such skill and dedication that before the night was over she was crying out continuously to sensations so powerful they rendered even the thought of self control meaningless. In the wee hours of the morning, when Lee Ann was weary and she floated in a delirium of total exhaustion Lee Ann had taken her in her arms, cuddling her against her ample breast as she spoke.

“Sundown my dear friend, the lover of my lifetime, my beautiful flower I found growing in the shadows of hell, you must leave me now. You must, I’ll not suffer that you stay. It is over. Half the world is not large enough to hold you, Sundown. Half the world is not enough, not for you.”

She’d kissed her then and left the bed having had no release herself. The last thing Sundown had seen of her then were tears streaming down her face as she’d looked back on her one last time from the door, her clothes in her hands. The aloneness began then.

When the memory released her she found herself sitting in a pew and there was not another to be seen. Perhaps she’d put herself there without knowing, or perhaps it was fate, or even divine intervention, but when she looked up Jesus was looking at her from his cross, staring her straight in the eye. She crossed herself as she bowed, and shuddered. So far she’d come, so far from the convent where her life had been renewed. The distance between them, what was it? What had driven such a gap between she and her first source of comfort? She stood, and took herself closer to the crucifix.

“What? What is it you want from me? Where did I fail?” she cried out, and her words echoed.

“You gave me a man, and I loved him, I did. You know I did. The man gave me children, I gave him children, and I loved them. Did I not love them enough? You took them from me, damn you, you took them all from me.” Tears burned on her face, and she paced, staring up from the ends at the figure above the alter. “War, disease, all of hell broke loose on earth and all you did was hang there and look sad while I burned. You took them from me.” She fell to her knees. “When they raped me as a child did they take something from me? Did they leave me so lacking I must live like this? Am I not good enough to keep happiness? Did you show me happiness and love only that I know what I was not to keep? Damn you, answer me!”

The echoes died, a silence fell broken only by the sound of a heart in agony. The agony grew, passed beyond grief, beyond tears, she leapt to her feet in rage.

“I believed in you, I did. I believed in you so much I punished myself for my sin, as much as I could stand, more than I could stand, and still you won’t tell me what it is.” She laughed, and it was not a happy sound. “So now, so now all the others, they are my sins, you can’t have them. No, you can’t. You can have the one, but the rest are mine. You can have my one great sin, whatever it is, but you can’t have my honor. I’ll not stand before your father and tell him I’m such a coward I’ll disown my own life. He will punish me for my sins, I’m sure he will. But you’ll have no claim to them, no you won’t. I’ve tasted hell, you know that. You heard me, you saw me. I wanted, I wanted so much to do penance for the sin you hide from me I learned to like it, the lash, the smell of hell from the lust of those who watched while I screamed. I learned to like it, and you couldn’t stand that.” She stopped, and stared up, and bitterness owned her voice when next she spoke.

“So you, you gave me a woman. You said here, you’re not woman enough to have a man, so here, take her, take this woman. Love her, be a woman to her. So I did, and I was such a fool to believe again. I don’t regret what I did with her, not in the least. She was good to me, and I to her, and I thought, I thought you were going to show me mercy at the last. But no, no, not for me. Not for me. When she turned away from me was she speaking your words? Was she? When she said half the world is not enough were those your words in her mouth? Were those your words from her mouth telling me I have to love and lose half the world to satisfy you? Then hear me, hear me now, damn you, and answer me….” She drew breath and screamed, a killing scream that tore wall to wall and rattled the windows. When the scream faded all that was to be heard for a moment were panting tears.

The voice echoed, as hers did. It was a gentle voice, deep and calm, it froze her where she stood. “Child, which half did your lover refer to? The northern half? Or the southern? Perhaps the east or the west? No, my troubled daughter, your lover meant none of those halves. She spoke of the male and female halves of our world. Perhaps she did speak the words our Lord would have because the love God asks from us knows no gender. Your lover was true, she loves you beyond such matters of the flesh. She was telling you she’d not hold you to only half the love you’re capable of. Be at peace, my child. You’ve done your penance. You want to know your sin? Laying to the will of God what wicked men and sad chance brought to pass, only that and no more. God waits for you to forgive yourself actions taken in despair when you sinned against yourself, not him. You have repented those sins, truly, and now you must forgive yourself for them. God already has, he forgave them as they happened. He knew your heart. Great love and great loss, fires in the soul to temper us, to teach mercy and compassion. Read of the saints, you are not the first to come to this pass. Honor God’s trust in you, carry what you’ve learned to those still in the darkness.”

Sundown whirled, and flew, desperate to find him, the source of that voice. But quickly as she moved he was equally quick and all she saw was a glimpse of his robe as the door closed behind him. She fell to her knees and for an hour didn’t move.

The priest understood the need of the moment. He summoned nuns to watch the doors that none might enter until she left, that when she left she not be alone. When at length Sundown opened the door she found two nuns waiting for her. They spoke no word to her, but one on either side walked with her and when the cab arrived they took her in turn into a gentle hug, squeezed her hands as they put her in the car. In the rented room she struggled to find sleep exhausted beyond rest. Somewhere before dawn her body finally put a curfew on the whirling in her soul and she slept, restless and twitching until Jean Luc came to her and kissed her lips, kissed her ears with words of forgiveness and then she slept in deep sleep until past noon the next day.

She awakened and did not know where she was. A strange room, a strange air, a strangeness about herself. She rose from the bed and in innocence walked nude to the window. The view gave no information, she turned away from the window. Only when she saw her clothes on the floor did it come to her what she’d done. The force of the night had so drained her she had to search for a name to call herself. She thought her real name and a shock passed through her. Her hands fell to her body, only when they came away with no blood on them did she give up her breath. Memory began creeping in and with it the weight. She went to the chair to sit with her head in her hands for some time. The facts came quickly, but the facts did not take away the strange numbness that pervaded her view. She bathed and dressed to habit, when she left the room she wrote down the address not trusting her memory to get her back.

She’d written the address on the back of the card the woman had given her. A public telephone in the lobby caught her eye, the number in flowing script glowed with the hope of company, any company to anchor her in the world of the living. She called the number, trembling with hope when the woman answered.

“You gave me your card yesterday evening, and I am afraid I was, well, perhaps I was a bit rude. Please, would you dine with me tonight? I’d like to make a better apology in person.”

“I should be delighted,” the woman answered. “There is no apology needed, dear, you were not rude in the least, only lost in thought. Come, shall we meet there again in say an hours time?”

It was a pleasant afternoon, when Sundown arrived she was seated at a table out of doors where one angle showed a small garden, the other the people passing by on the street. She sipped at an espresso as she waited, turning the tiny sips of bitter liquid on her tongue hoping it would bring her into the day. The night had released her, but the day had yet to arrive. She was staring into the street watching the people pass, idly wondering at the errands that motivated them, when the woman seated herself across the table.

“Good afternoon,” she said, as if they’d been friends for some time.

“Yes, it is a good afternoon,” Sundown replied. “A bit lazy, for me. A bit dreamy.”

The woman nodded. “A bit dreamy. Such a good way to describe it.” The waiter came, she ordered a glass of wine. “We’ve yet to introduce ourselves,” she said, “but now I wonder if we should. Would you be more comfortable if we shared time as familiar strangers?”

Sundown leaned her head and looked the woman in the face, for the first time looking to see what might be seen. Not so young as she’d thought the night before, but not that old either, an age that hadn’t tarnished her beauty, it was still striking, perhaps a bit gaunt in the manner of Picasso. Her eyes were darkly green inviting a moment without pretense. Sundown nodded. “Perhaps, perhaps that would be good. Let us call ourselves by what we see of ourselves rather than the name we show the world.”

The woman smiled and nodded as she looked up and away. “Oh, my. What single word can I find that describes me? Let me think here a bit. I’ve been predator, and prey, each in their season. I’ve been wife, but never mother and so I still hunt but now not so much for flesh but rather for those I may leave a bit of myself with to grow and continue me after I’m gone. I hunt and when I find I try and lift them up, I find most satisfaction in protecting and growing. So, for today, I think I shall be Griffin. I think in you I see a fertile place, I think I see one who has undone much of herself and is searching about for what to put into that place. Do I see correctly?”

Sundown nodded. “You do, you are perceptive. Of myself, I would say that I am, yes, I will be seeking those things. I’m still taking the other things apart, Griffin. I’ve not had time yet to clear the field. Soon, soon enough I’ll be a pilgrim searching for what to put back. But for now, well, I called myself a refugee just the other night and I should be honest. I am still a refugee.”

The Griffin extended her hand, Sundown took it wondering a bit that it was offered. “I’ll not call you refugee,” the woman said, “you are a guest in my world, a welcome guest. We’ll eat, and then I think a bit of privacy is in order. You’ll tell me of what you clear away and what you dream of in it’s place and you’ll be the better for that. And me, I’ll find satisfaction in holding your dream, looking at it and turning it in my hands to see where some little thing of me might find a home if there is a place you would like to put such as I offer. Is this a way you’d care to spend an evening?”

It is said, and it’s quite often true, that when God takes a hand in helping a life the perceptive will notice that things come in sets of three. For all her turmoil Sundown remained perceptive. First Roland, who’d helped her cry to something besides pain, and then a priest who’d heard her in his chapel ranting and railing against God and done his masters work, giving absolution and understanding, and now this woman, who spoke so calmly of doing things Sundown had barely formed thoughts of. There were tears standing when she answered “Oh, yes, I would. Thank you.”

The Griffin smiled, and it was a wise smile and a strangely, powerfully seductive smile. “Dear guest, in time perhaps you’ll come to understand why I should be the one to thank you. Let’s have a waiter, I brought an appetite.”

They ate a moderate meal and drank several glasses of wine, the wine to the Griffin’s gentle persuasion, she knew how she wanted her guest. They left the restaurant, a cab took them to the Griffin’s house on the outskirts of the city. Entering the house Sundown was instantly struck by how much the interior gave clue to the Griffin herself, every room balanced between the genders: paintings to stir a man’s blood, the romance of the great ship carrying full sail into a running sea, the cloak and the bull and still others to warm a woman’s heart, the fertile landscape where to a half glance the shadow contour of the hills were the full breasts of a reclining mother held low to nurture the infant village nestled beside, the single acutely feminine flower waiting to be lifted from it’s bed and enjoyed before it’s beauty should fade. The Griffin led her through several rooms to the back of the house where a wide porch sheltered beneath a second story, screens of oriental silk on either side giving privacy, a hill falling away behind to a road several hundred meters below.

Sundown turned, and admired all within her sight, it was a beautiful place. As she finished turning about the Griffin took her face in her hands and when there was no denial in Sundown’s eyes she brought Sundown’s face to her, caressing lips with lips. “Guest, come and sit with me. You labored hard in your night, I see it in your eyes. Tell me why the night has left you so transparent.”

They settled on an upholstered porch swing somewhat longer than Sundown was tall and there they stayed for a long time. Shortly Sundown was reclining on the cushion, her head in the Griffin’s lap, her eyes closed to the Griffin’s touch. The swing was in motion beneath her rocking gently. It was so comfortable Sundown truly smiled for the first time in so very long. The Griffin read her expression and caressed her face, let her arm rest over ribs, her hand patting gently.

“Guest, are you comfortable?” Sundown nodded. “Then please, favor me with your story. How is it you came to be here, so beautiful, so sad and so alone?”

It was not so hard, the second time. The Griffin questioned her at points, drawing out the details, holding Sundown to her course when she’d flinch or falter. She told first of her master, the relationship and her reasons. It had to be first, were it not it might have remained hidden. She told of being rescued by Lee Ann, of joining her life, of having been turned away. The Griffin shook her head. There was so much deep sadness in the person she nursed and yet there had to have been more than sadness at some point. Those who’d known nothing else didn’t survive so long.

“But it wasn’t always so, was it. No, no it wasn’t. Who were they, those you lost? What was his name?”

“Jean Luc, my husband’s name was Jean Luc, ” Sundown replied. Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes, the Griffin intercepted them before they could fall.

“And…?” she prompted, and needed say no more. The dam had held for twelve years, it had turned torture and love alike but the foundations it sat on had eroded in the days past, it could hold no longer. “And Pierre and little Marie,” Sundown uttered, choking as she turned to put her face against the Griffin, tears pouring. The Griffin shifted, bringing Sundown closer, holding her with an arm over her back.

The Griffin let her cry for a good long time, it was so obvious to her it was so very, very long overdue. She let her cry, but she didn’t let grief claim her. After a bit she lifted her, turned her face back up and made her tell of the funny, happy things, made her change the texture of her tears. The Griffin was wise, veteran, she knew both men and women. She guessed and guessed well when she tickled Sundown exactly as Jean Luc was wont to do when he resigned a minor annoyance by claiming a giggle. “He did that, didn’t he,” she said as Sundown giggled and smiled through her tears.

“Yes, yes he did,” she said, trying to form words through all else in progress.

The sun was riding the horizon when they returned to the house. They had a bite of fruit and cheese, and another glass of wine. Sundown was still occasionally hiccupping, the purge of her grief had left a mark on her for the time being, but her eyes were restored. They carried a desire, and a hope. The Griffin took note and changed her plans. She hadn’t thought to entertain the body of this woman, it wasn’t what she needed, not when she’d first seen her. But now the eyes carried a desire, hoping to give a token in return, they spoke of a need to make the attempt and the Griffin thought it would certainly do neither of them harm. As dark fell she made it a laughing thing, children at play, giggling and tickling, announcing the arrival of an orgasm with rolling laughter followed by deep sighs and smiles. It had been fun, and more, it opened the woman she hosted one step further, opened her to speak of her future.

They lay side by side for a time, resting, such play was hard work. At length Sundown took herself to an elbow, looking down on her benefactor. “Thank you,” she said, and put a kiss over the Griffin’s heart.

“Thank you my dear. I live for and on what you’ve given me this afternoon.”

“How so, Griffin? You, you’ve done so much for me, so quickly, what could I have given you?”

The Griffin lifted, reversed their postures and kissed Sundown. “Take my word for it, you’ve given me a gift equal to any I’ve been able to give you dear girl. I didn’t do much for you, you’re right, I didn’t have time to do much. All I did was look and see where you were. We get older, we become closed in and wither, I fight against that. I guess I’m a bit of a voyeur to be perfectly honest. The heat and the passion, the life and light and love in this world, and yes, the pain as well, it is so often hidden away and we forget it on our way to the grave. It is that forgetting that hastens us on our way. Of all things that arouse me the greatest is for someone to share those with me that I may honor what they share. We had fun just now, a little thing between us. But before that you shared so much more with me, you touched me so deeply. You let me know there is life in me even yet.”

Sundown’s eyes went a trifle sad. “All I did was share my grief. Hardly a thing to give someone.”

“Oh, no, no, dear girl. ” She shifted, put a finger across Sundown’s lips, holding her to silence. Her eyes became firm, almost stern. “You shared courage with me, courage and kindness and hope. You’d put yourself through hell, for years, and you still had enough of the human in you to weep for another? You survived what utterly destroys all but the strongest and still had heart enough to love again, no matter from which side of the bed? Do you know how rare that is? How I prize finding a person like you? Just to know, to know and not hope that there are those like you left in this world? It is a huge gift. So many are so shallow. There is so little there to work with, so little to hope for. Oh, no. You needed those tears so badly. I know that, I’ve cried them myself. There is nothing of the body to compare with what your tears felt like to me, don’t you know that? How exquisite it was to hold another as I was once held, to feel the pieces of her shattered heart roll and tumble within her, to watch as they took their proper places and began to fuse? To be gifted the trust to see that is to know again how it felt when my heart did exactly the same thing. It is all of God that I know.”

Sundown looked up at the fervent passion in the Griffins eyes and the tumblers in the heavy lock fate had put on her soul started turning. One by one they fell, as she put her hands on the face, as she drew the face down to hers, as she kissed the mouth, reaching in to taste it, sharing the breath of her lungs. She used what Jacque had taught her to roll the Griffin so quickly she knew nothing of the motion, only that suddenly Sundown was above her, astraddle her thighs, leaning down to continue holding her face between her palms.

“You said, you said you hoped to put a little piece of you into me, where it would grow and continue on after you were gone. I know what I’d like, I do.”

The Griffin shook her head, wondering at the light breaking free in the eyes locked to hers. “What? What part of an old woman like me would you like to carry on?”

Sundown fell on her then, bringing them into alignment as she took the Griffin into a kiss that carried all her heart. When she lifted she was crying again, but didn’t notice. “This, what you just said, that attitude, to live to feel another heal.” She sat back up, and wiped her eyes. “I loved my man with all my heart, I’ll not short change another by asking him to compete with that memory. My children went home with their father, I’ll bear no more. I couldn’t live with my fear for them.”

Sundown had been told she carried a gift, she’d seen the hints, the odd events, but she hadn’t mastered it, not yet, nor even fully admitted to its presence. She had no idea, none, that it had awakened for the first time in several years. It was a little thing to notice the arousal growing on the Griffin, it would wait and be the sweeter for the waiting. She had no idea the source of that arousal, that in the Griffin’s eyes she’d just become every dream, every hope that sustained her come to flesh.

“What else can I aspire too? What else can I do, to repent, to thank God for those who’ve loved me, those who saved me, often from myself? There is no chastity left me, it is gone. I’ve shared myself in love, I’ve shared myself in perversion beyond telling. Man or woman, I’ve had both, they’ve had me. There is nothing I need fear for myself, I’ve been there before. Death can do nothing but reunite my family. And now, now I know it doesn’t matter, no, it doesn’t. Flesh is only the shell, it is the light that matters. Please, may I? May I take that part of you to honor for as long as I live?”

The Griffin was hanging deliciously over the edge of a huge orgasm and didn’t even notice so full was her hope. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes please, of all things please, take that,” she said as she trembled.

Sundown looked down on her and saw her destiny clearly. She bit at her lip as she smiled. “Lee Ann was right, may God carry my words to her, she was right. Half the world is not enough, not for any of us. How she must love me, how she must love.” She fell forward, weeping for the love of Lee Ann, of Jean Luc, of her sister Indy. It was all she knew, the love they’d shown her. The Griffin caught her as she fell, rolled with her, and between that moment and when they slept the heat between them threatened to ignite the bed.

Sundown left the Griffin in the early hours before the dawn, deeply asleep, peace on her face. She penned a short note. She thanked the Griffin, said her train was to leave in the morning, which it was, said she’d find her again on the return journey, signed it her most grateful guest. In post script added “Because of you I will live to carry the light.”

She did find the Griffin, later, and learned her name from her headstone. Sundown had never entertained the thought the Griffin’s words were more than a turn of phrase set in some future. The Griffin hadn’t told that she’d been diagnosed terminal, that the doctors could promise her nothing but a slow and painful decline into death, that the day she’d shared with Sundown had been one of only a very few the disease had granted be pain free during the year past. The week after Sundown departed Italy the Griffin passed in her sleep, quietly, painlessly, her heart simply slowed to a stop of its own accord, the disease was not a factor. They found her with a smile on her face and Sundown’s note in her hand. As she sat by the grave Sundown came to understand when she’d accepted the most precious thing the Griffin had to offer she’d granted the woman a peace she’d not allow until someone she could believe had promised to carry it into the future. It was a powerful thing in her soul, knowing she carried the lifetime hope of another. What she felt then eventually became a statue in her study, the winged lioness reared up, wings spread full and paws outstretched, fierce and powerful in defense of the children who sheltered beneath her.

*** *** ***

The ocean was to the west and the heat was incredible. The Suez, in June. The ship was stopped waiting for the locks. Sundown sat on the deck beneath the canvas shade and made sport of trying to count how many beads of sweat were currently tickling her as they ran down. At the moment it was at least ten. Her dress was light, sleeveless, she was nude beneath. A large electric fan stirred the air but to little avail. The world was a sauna, and that was that. It was worse below decks.

This is the land of Moses she thought, looking out over the desert. This is the fire God chose to temper his people, to burn out the impurities. Moses came through that fire, Jesus endured it for forty days. She’d reread the Bible on the passage from Italy, it was a slow boat with many ports of call. She looked out over the desert, took note of an airplane buzzing along following the canal. Flying machines. What next? A vibration ran up her legs, steadied and disappeared as the prop smoothed with motion. They were underway.

She’d ride the ship to India and again take a train to the north, her destination a monastery nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, a corner of the world where all the great religions found a convergence. Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, all were represented there. It was the part of the world mankind dedicated to searching for God in whatever form they could perceive him. She’d picked it from a brochure, found it on a map, had no real idea what it would be other than as far from France as conveniently possible. It was a long journey, a long retreat, and it had already done such good. Rome had done so much good, a good priest, a good woman who’s true name she didn’t even know. She looked about the ship and smiled at herself. All things allowed for she was doing quite well, thank you.

She’d acquired a companion at the dinner table, an American oil man who spoke as much French as she did English, it was good company to converse with him. He was ruggedly handsome in that manner she’d come to expect of Americans, tall and angular, muscles that flowed as he moved. He’d been in the mid east some five years exploring for petroleum beneath the sand. Ten years prior she would have been terrified of him, half that span would have found her cold and aloof, but now she looked at him with different eyes. When he didn’t know she was watching, when he wasn’t trying to be on his best behavior, in those times she found him fascinating and beautiful, so large, so powerful. Had she a catalog to choose from she doubted she could have found a better specimen to represent the other half of the world. It really wasn’t to lust for him in particular that she studied him, it was more to find where she’d put her desires for his half of the world.

She’d not hidden them so deep as she’d thought, she went right past the door several times before it was revealed to her while sitting on deck with him and sharing a bottle of his whiskey. They’d been close on the Greek islands waiting out the night rocking at anchor off the coast. He’d opened a bit with the liquor, spoken of dreams, touched on those things he held close to his heart. She’d listened to him, closing her eyes, refusing to know his gender, only his words and the feel they brought.

He dreamed of a home in the manner that men who wander do, a home in the shadows of the great trees of the California coast where the rising sun lit the tops and the setting sun glowed in the waters of the Pacific. Another tumbler of whiskey and he spoke of the woman of that home, a woman of his kind, tall and strong, a fiercely free creature who shared his passion of self determination, whose determination was that she shared with him. In that he stirred her, she entertained the dream, took up his vision of this woman. The door opened when she found to some surprise how closely her fantasy matched his. They dreamed of the same thing, from opposite sides of the mirror. A companion, a mate to pacify the instinctive desires of the flesh, a strength to grant sanctuary, a trust to receive sanctuary in turn that the scales swing in balance. What was so different about that? Gender? Jean Luc was man, he’d filled her life completely, why try and rationalize that Lee Ann had done any more? Full was full. What mattered which side of the glass one looked from, the desire was the same.

He’d awakened to what he said then and looked at her with a question in his eyes. He didn’t try and touch her, he never said a word, only looked. She’d returned his gaze and thought, no, not yet. Let it get stronger. I’m not able, not quite yet. She gave him her compliment, drawing a deep breath that he clearly see it wasn’t that her flesh hadn’t responded to his and before she took her leave of him she caressed his face in passing, saying “Hank, thank you, but no. In this time, in this place, I’ll not offer myself as a poor substitute to what you dream. I’m a work in progress these days. I’m not able, not right now. I’ll do you more good as a dream than I can in the flesh. Enjoy me in your dreams and know I’ll be doing the same.”

He’d surprised her then, for all he was a man who walked the world where he would, catching her hand as it left his face to kiss her fingertips saying “I’m sure you know better than I where that will do you proper. Goodnight.”

She sat on the deck in the sweltering heat, and reflected that it had done her good, the tiny kiss on her fingers. It had taken a bit of effort, but only a bit, to hold him in her thought. She’d saved that hand, until near the end. A puff of breeze blew by, it felt almost cool. She got up and went in search of water.

The last of the locks were behind them before she returned to any subject beyond endurance. Hank had departed at the locks, joining a convoy of trucks headed into the desert. He’d spoken of their moment of intimacy then, taking her by surprise with a grin and a good natured laugh. “Farewell, Sundown, good hunting. It will be quite a while before any other wench has half a chance of chasing you out of my dreams.” It was actually quite a milestone for her, she’d blushed as if she were still a girl in her teens.

She looked back into the desert where he was and the little pang of thinking of him in that baking land made her realize how deeply the yank had touched her. Her lips formed a kiss, she let it fly on the breeze to go and find him. He’d done her a service, proving the other half of the world was still open to her, that a heart among them might desire her.

The ship left the canal, entered the Red Sea. It would be the longest of the sea voyages without port, at the least two weeks at sea. The next port of call would be Calcutta, hers, and she’d enter a brand new world. The days stretched, became elongated and ill defined. There was so little to do, and so much. Sol became her counsel, Diana her companion, a deck of cards about her only company. Not since the convent days had time stood so patiently and demanded she fill it from within.

As the water churned past she took up exercises in her mind. As the watches changed she changed her focus, working imagination to provide a framework from which to work. The Griffin became her benchmark, the manner she’d been handled by her. She’d said ‘all I did was look, and see where you were…’ , so much carried on that thought, to such consequence. For several days it became of consequence to understand the difference between looking and seeing. To look was to simply avoid being run down, but to see was such a different thing. To see one had to know somewhat of what was to be seen, it wasn’t a thing of the eyes alone. She searched her memory and realized she knew quite a bit of what there was to be seen on those about her. The sisters had taught her some, Jacque and Jean Luc more, but those learning’s had been in the scope of situations that only included a narrow spectrum. It was a bit revolting, but still true enough, a fair amount of what she knew she’d learned from her master and that set her thinking in another direction.

Two people, she speculated, any two people, any gender combination possible. What of the things they showed themselves, showed the world, remained in common to common cause? Sitting in the deck chair she steeled herself and went back into the memory of the days of misery, not for what she’d experienced then, but for what she’d seen around her and never given thought to while enduring where she’d seen it.

Their livelihood, hers and her master’s, had been provided in large degree by charging others to witness them, to watch as her master had taken her humiliations deeper by making them public, at least to a degree. The regulars, those who attended most of the spectacles were a set thing, they never varied. But as she looked back, brought back the faces of the others, those who’d attended once, or twice, they were a different matter, as had been those who knew of her masters’ trade and directed their glance towards her with such a mixed run of things. She’d carried herself proud, in those days and in public, regardless of the true state of her soul. The looks had hurt, more insulted than hurt, and it was when he spoke to her of those looks her master had given a great deal of education.

“See there,” he would say when she’d stiffen, lift her face and look away, “it is not their moral superiority they flout, but rather the secrecy of their sins. Between us it is known, to many it is known. They gloat for what they think are their secrets, but my flower,” his pet name for her, “their secrets are not so very.”

He’d known a very great deal of the dirty secrets of the world, of the people about who’d filled that world. In fact his shrewd understanding and even compassion for them made some proof his sexual condition was an affliction and not a choice. She had a reference, herself, and his assessment. He survived on his ability to read people, in the current state of affairs, to her current motive, while the first fervor of a noble ambition still burned hot she went back into those memories in detail putting into tolerable fantasies the wisdom she’d bought and paid for under the lash. It filled several days, the daylight hours anyway, she spent her nights building fantasies that cleansed away what she’d dealt with during the days: of Jean Luc restored to her, of Lee Ann’s greeting on her return, of finding Hank again and reversing her decision.

There was one night in particular she’d avoided visiting until she’d exhausted all the others. In the beginning of the exercise she’d thought of that night first, and then dismissed it until the very last, in it’s own way it was the most painful thing her master ever inflicted, it was the night Lee Ann had found her, it was the end of that epoch.

He’d cuckolded her that night, in a manner of speaking. She was bound on the stage, but not as usual. She suffered no flogging, no pain of the body, but rather was put on display as an example for comparison and a humiliation of deepest degree. Her master had come by a device, a small saddle shaped to open and fit her front parts with a phallic plunger, the device rode the end of a long and limber spring. He’d packed her full of sheep’s fat and inserted the plunger, long laces holding it in place. That she’d know going in, he’d shown her that, how it didn’t really hurt, indeed, how the device could give pleasure. What he hadn’t told her was what was to drive the spring. He’d left her on the stage bound loosely, impaled on his device to watch as a nude, hooded boy on a leash was lead in and put in the customary place, customary save only that where she had stood on the floor he stood on a teeterboard that drove the spring. She’d stood in his place, it was a strange jealousy to see him there.

She’d cried, and cried out, certainly she had, it was brutal. She’d screamed, when pain and shock passed beyond conscious control. But nothing, nothing like he did. He’d paid handsomely for the treatment, several months expenses, and from the first lightest stroke had cried and screamed and danced working the teeterboard, and her, at a frantic pace. Her master had mocked him, inviting the crowd to recall her endurance, the tear stained remnants of her dignity when she’d choke and struggle to limit her cries, the laboring effort of working her breath against the pain as the audience sat mortuary silent to not miss the slightest nuance.

That night her master could give her no relief, no single stroke placed to numb those to follow. Her body was subjected to a mechanical vibration, it defended itself. He’d put her on display to suffer not painful damage but rather excruciatingly powerful, continuous mechanical orgasms for the edification of the crowd. She found herself more humiliated by unwilling arousal and climax than by any cry ever uttered in justified pain. The crowd burst into laughter when he’d all but crumbled to what she could endure in near silence. She saw the leering, hate filled lust that owned the faces, no tears blinded her eyes, she heard their laughter, clearly, her ears not filled with sound of her own heart beating. She saw their laughter was for him, not her, when their eyes came on her what humiliated her was being saluted as reward for enduring beyond anyone’s expectation. They’d never laughed, never, for whatever else drove them they’d respected her endurance, returning again and again to watch it challenged, each time hoping to see her break only to leave disappointed and secretly impressed. It was their laughter that nearly broke her, nearly cost her soul, the worst of the lash had hardly gotten close.

The laughter rang, it throbbed in her gut harder than the plug following an undefended path into her thought as it tried to take her for its own. For a short time she felt intoxicating pleasure at watching the boy’s weak dealings with lesser pain, a contemptuous mocking superiority, she was so much stronger than he. It was exactly as her master had intended she should feel. The thought unleashed a huge orgasm and to the delight of the crowd she writhed and gave full voice to the sensation. As it abated she opened her mouth, but before the cruel laughter she’d intended could burst forth her soul rallied, charging back at the last to fight suicidal fierce to defend itself against the beast, to silence it lest the voice of the beast trap her in the same hell as her master.

She’d lifted her eyes away then, away from the pathetic thing before her and looked straight into the face of Lee Ann standing at the edge of the crowd with tears on her face. He’d been her friend, had been until he’d ignored her plea to not satiate himself in such a manner. She’d only come to confirm someone would take him home to doctor his wounds. Released from her humiliation she’d helped Lee Ann get him home and not gone back save to get her clothes.

Sitting in the deck chair she made herself remember that moment when her soul had made its’ stand, made herself fully relive it. From her new perspective she suddenly, horribly came to fully understand the nature of cruelty in its’ truest form and lost her lunch over the rail at the thought of what her master had tried to do to her.

It shocked her to the core to know in full how close she’d come to damnation. She spent the remainder of the day dozing fitfully, often crying awake or not. The first mate, who doubled as the ships doctor, observed her state and after several hours awakened her to ask if she’d like a sedative. She tried to answer no, no thank you, but she saw herself in his eyes and relented, allowed herself the comfort he offered. He met her at her cabin, standing outside the door until she’d donned a nightdress before helping her into the bunk and administering an injection that dropped her instantly into a dreamless sleep that held till the following dawn.

For two days she floated and did little, the mid point of the voyage passed into the wake. The mate had been right, a sedative was called for. The narcotic had broken the tension she’d been building for days with her thoughts, things became distant, academic. What was left to explore? Her answer came at dinner, overheard between the purser and the mate, a discussion of philosophy and languages of the world. The purser was holding forth that no language of the world contained as many words to describe happiness as it did shades of the opposite, the mate was trying to prove him wrong using the language of the Polynesian peoples for an example. He might have been correct, but he couldn’t prove it.

Sundown was drifting with their debate and taking her own tack with it. It was quite a thought, really. Words represent the things known to the people who speak them, the subtleties of their use the structures of thought. If the purser was correct, as she was prone to suspect, then most of mankind truly labored against a curse of monumental proportions: the very language that set him apart from the animals biased his existence to the darkness. On the other hand the mate was a good man, she’d seen that in the few minutes she’d suffered that he handle her giving relief from herself, there was no reason to doubt what he said, either. He’d traveled the world and she suspected him of wisdom beyond what showed day to day. The people of the south seas were rumored to have a happiness uncorrupted by what most called civilization which allowed the curse was not native to all of mankind, it could be broken.

The narcotic sleep had broken the tension of her hell recalled, it had done nothing to dim the Griffin’s gift, or her determination to carry it forward. To carry light, to leave light in a life, meant the one to receive had to have something to hold the light in, a place to keep it. She turned the point, it brought about a bit of an epiphany on her own behalf and her understanding jumped several levels. Her years in hell, it wasn’t there was no light to be had, it was she’d lost the places to put it. She had oceans of room for miseries, but no tiny pail to carry joy. Those, those had left with Jean Luc, with Pierre and Marie. The word thoughts, every one, that served for containers of happiness had lost that meaning. In one way or another every one had been tied to her family, after their deaths they only carried loss and pain. She entertained the thought all evening, standing by the rail in the moonlight, and the mate standing his watch on the bridge wondered where she was.

That would be Lee Ann, she thought, seeking back to the first little bits to return to her. Of course, that would be Lee Ann. She’d offered herself as a container for happiness, and since she was the first woman as lover there had been room in her to carry some light. Lesbian love was sexual, in many ways more sexual than with a man, but it was different, named differently, invoked differently, to different purpose. Those words, thoughts, they hadn’t had loss and pain written on them so large as to leave room for nothing else. They’d been new to her.

She stood in the moonlight and she missed her lover. It was a new thing, the mood that took her. She wanted, yearned, to have ten minutes with Lee Ann in that moment, that she might tell her she’d finally, finally come to understand her gift. It was an arousal of the heart, not the body, as she put herself back in Lee Ann’s arms to gaze up and tell her how grateful she was for her embrace, to be held against breasts rather than hold. To be held there had room for light, any she brought to her own only brought the darkness of loss, of the children who’d suckled there to her mind. In his first seduction her master had sensed that, had paid a great deal of attention to them. As she’d struggled to accept his caress there he’d known to make it what she already felt in that place, he’d suckled hard and bit like a child who needed weaning, the pain in her nipples exactly matching the pain of memory, the pain he gave immediate, to block what lived there as habit. He’d seen how she responded, known the cause, known she was his. The bastard. With understanding like that he could have done so much differently.

She shivered, and refused to follow him back. No. She’d been there already. But now she had a comparison, and an understanding. Lee Ann had taken her to suckle, taught her what she’d forgotten since her infancy, how to suckle a woman. She learned to be the infant a lesbian love could not produce and so give relief to the instinct in the one, and take to herself a nourishment of peace and security from light carried in the deepest of memory. It was light by reflection only, but still, it had been light she so desperately needed, dazzling thoughts lost in the blackest of darkness for so very long. Thank you, Lee Ann, thank you.

How many other things, she wondered, how many other things are that way? How many places in the human memory stand as containers for light and goodness? How much of light and goodness is lost for lack of a container suitably named? She turned, paced the deck stem to stern, rail for rail as she thought. Our world, everyone’s world, is carried in both literal memory and the words built to describe that memory to self or others. And therein the mate and the pursers debate had purchase, because a memory lacking a word to describe it was both helpless and threat. If a fair memory, a moment of happiness that could not be communicated or examined for content to lack of a symbol, then it was a helpless memory, it could hardly hold its own to the inflow of new events and so could be lost. If it were a dark memory devoid of symbol by which to be recognized it could be become a terror of the soul, every event in the least degree similar would find it, follow the same path, there was no thought of the mind to direct it elsewhere. They collected at the bottom and became stronger with the years. She was moving forward along the starboard side, just past amidships, when she stumbled and cried out. The mate on the bridge started, locked his eyes on her prepared to vault to the deck at need.

She caught herself, straitened and moved on, the mate relaxed. She’d had no warning and that was good. It had come back to her, unannounced and at full resolution, the first time the heavy lash had torn the crease between buttock and upper thigh, the first time the gag had echoed a true scream into her throat. She’d endured it then, she mastered it in the moment and forced it to remain where she could see and feel it. It had hurt, oh damn it had hurt, the bruising and the burning as blood ran beneath torn skin. Why, why had she allowed it? Her answer came to her at the prow, she stood to examine it. She’d allowed it because she knew a name for it. She was being flogged, her master had taken terror beyond understanding telling her she was to be truly flogged, but the first time she’d felt such she hadn’t known a name to put to the agony of her soul. When she’d held Marie’s body and watched as Pierre died it had hurt in much the same way, even worse, but she’d had no name for it. It had lain in wait for her until her master’s cruelty gave it a name, but that name wasn’t the true source of what his lash invoked. The body would heal, or die, but the name for what happened to the body had been written to all memory similar and many truths lost to the event.

She looked out over the waves, at the stripe of light the moon painted on the ocean. Had I known a name, had I but known a name for that could I have defended myself? If a person has only the true name for such a thing how much have they gained in their defense against it? She shook her head, and sighed. Of course, the defense would be so much stronger. A name for such a thing keeps each event separate, at least to its’ source. Flogged, floggings, there, the name of what she’d suffered. She’d known that, of course. But fate had flogged her long before her master had, it had flogged so many in the years of war and plague. One but had to look, with the intent of seeing, to know how many were still beneath the lash, were always beneath that lash and suffering without a name for it, without a name to build a defense to. How many who suffered with it knew, as she did, that in many ways the healing was the same? It was part of him, her master, to work with great skill to heal what he’d done that he might repeat it later.

She was back at the stern, watching the wake boil out luminescent to fade at the horizon when she began to understood how she might fulfill her promise to the Griffin, her promise to God. There was light about, there was always light about. Just look, the ocean was dark elsewhere, but the passage of the ship stirred the water and light remained at the surface for her to see. It was not lack of light most suffered to, it was lack of a place to keep the light, to pin the dark, she saw so clearly how much of the world suffered to that. To carry light to people was more a matter of giving them a place to keep the light that was everywhere than to provide them a flicker that would be gone when she was. She’d lived on the light Lee Ann carried in herself for a decade and lost it so quickly for lack of a container to hold it, in that time neither had known how to build a container to collect more. Had they known, had they known a month with her would have sufficed to write and overwrite and make ready places to gather what was everywhere.

In the weeks past fate, as her master had, had given to heal the flogging it dealt and she’d seen it at it’s work. She knew pain and suffering, oh yes, fate and her master had made sure of that. And she knew joy and happiness, Indy and Jacque and Jean Luc and Pierre and especially Marie had given her that, Lee Ann as well, she understood that. But now the most critical thing had made itself known. We live moment for moment, hardly having time to know each moment before it was overwritten by the next, but life was the recollections of those moments and the nature of recollection depended on the name of the container they were drawn from to be known by.

She thought about it as she returned to her cabin. She’d known truly massive pleasure to her master’s will, even to his little lash when he was delicate with the cruel thing, but that pleasure had been carried in the same container with grief, she could not summon it and know light, it had been recorded as darkness. She’d known pain to Jean Luc, she had, he’d been large and prior to her children at times in her month she’d been very tight and not easily stretched, it had hurt, but the hurting had been recorded with tender words and caresses, the light in his eyes, the feeling in her heart when he would give himself into her with such a shudder only to lay on her breast in such peace afterwards. That pain could be brought to mind and known as a good thing, it was warm and gentle and glowed with the frequency of a woman’s strength in love. And Pierre and Marie, oh, oh lord, they had hurt, to deliver them had hurt so badly, the helpless hours of labor and delivery an agony to equal any three floggings, but, but nothing of the body could overwrite what they’d brought her, to hold the little one as the tiny mouth took her nipple, the sensation when first milk flowed and life was there, she could revel in that pain even yet, a light to blind her when she could bear the memory, it was part of the other.

She lay nude in her bunk and the last willed thought of the day was to become a teacher of a sort, using her freedom of soul to teach others to make many large places in themselves that carried light, to label each with many names that not the tiniest bit be lost. She’d teach them to keep small the places that carried the dark all lives know, with but one very specific name that it never accumulate and poison a soul, that it might be brought to mind at need and cower in its smallness compared to the containers of light.

As she drifted towards sleep other thoughts took her, but not to her will: Jean Luc entering her from behind in the manner of a stallion, his hands holding her by her hips guiding the incredible ecstasy of his motion when she’d gained her full maturity and could receive him to the deepest, but she did not rest her head on the pillow as she had then, no, beneath her was Lee Ann with warm strong arms around her, holding her that her arms should bring Lee Ann’s breasts up to her face, that her mouth might offer tender caress to the nipples that had fed life back into her soul after the vampires had drained her near dry. In that Jean Luc had entered her from the one angle Lee Ann pressed open her flesh from the other, and it was conspiracy between them to move in such coordinated rhythm, so slowly and so deeply and with such perfect gentle passion, to build for her such an ocean of light; her hands moved of their own accord, then her hips, and soon enough her entire body, and when her body came full she cried out softly and fell into sleep with her life full restored, an infant Pierre at one breast, an infant Marie at the other. Her darkness was over.

The dawn came, early as always, Sundown did not emerge from the cabin for some hours afterwards. She missed breakfast, and took a huge appetite to lunch. The purser and the mate joined her at the meal, and exchanged glances. She was smiling, she laughed to a lame joke overheard, there was light around her. She went back for second helpings and took fruit with her when she left the room. The mate held out his hand, the purser passed him a silver doubloon. The wager had been laid early in the voyage: before she debarked would they, keeping company that it be a matter of fact known to both, ever see their beautiful passenger truly smile? The purser bet no, so few who carried that look ever really did, the mate the perpetual optimist said yes, it could happen, a sea voyage might give time of thought to free herself and God willing freed she’d be happy and smile. The purser had made the better bet, but the mate had been a seeker as well, he’d found his, seen that she appeared in active pursuit and so hoped. He laid the ceremonial coin by their chessboard, it would leave with the winner.

The world was a different place. The ship was the same, the ocean the same, and the world changed. She kicked out the footrest and relished the sun on her skin. For the first time in years her sexuality was satiated, the road that had taken her into and out darkness stood empty for the moment. Her world was light, thoughtlessly happy for several hours. Nothing had ever felt so wholesome, so good. A word tickled at her thoughts, and the word was nirvana.

She lifted, removed the shade to don tinted lenses, and looked about. The only thing to be seen was the ship of course and so she studied it. The men who crewed them, who spent so much of their lives aboard them, they always called their ship a she. It had always confused her, a bit, that turn of phrase. With nothing but time she set about trying to understand. This ship was not small, a full ocean going freighter, but she wasn’t particularly large either. She was slow, speed had not been a concern, at the limits of the boiler twenty knots was her best, she cruised at twelve. As ships went she was as ordinary as any housewife hanging laundry in a housecoat and curlers. So whence came the romance? Well, of course. The men gave her a romance. They had to. They lived in such close company with the ship, her health theirs, the ocean beyond her hull a hostile barren waste for those born to the land. She was a she, the ship stood in a place no moral woman should: mother and lover in the same glance, demanding mistress and nurturing protector. She laughed, and walked. They did the women of the world such a compliment and so few felt anything but jealousy to it. Silly girls, thinking to capture a captain and not understand his love of a ship.

His love of a ship, the thought echoed back. His love of a ship. There was more there to be understood, it but kissed the top of a very large subject. How many things could truly be carried under the title of love? Man to woman, or vice versa, of course. Lover to lover, gender no matter. Between parent and child, the needed nurturing and the debt of nurture paid. The thought exploded, ran to the horizon. A quote, a scripture came to her “…and the greatest of these is love…”

She came to the stern, and looked back. To carry light was to carry love, and such a cargo came in such a variety of forms. People could be to such a degree thought of as ships of the ocean. Some swift, some slow. Some who moved burdened beneath the goods of commerce, carrying who could say how many hours of how many lives to be traded in foreign ports as did this ship, others who existed to deal death and destruction, preying on or protecting those who carried the results of lives. So much like the people. What of it, though? People were, as ships were, grown into their roles. She proposed to move among them all and leave light where she could. What sort of ship did that make her? In this point she felt herself but a keel, the rails that would carry her to the water yet to be laid.

She started forward, laying out the vellums on the drawing boards as it were. What sort of ship would she make of herself to move on so many varied waters? What was she now, what skills did she bring to this ambition? She started a list. Her first thought was of Jacque, of the martial art he’d taught her that she’d have the courage to face and purge the mark of the beast left within her from her first passage of hell. She was armed, heavily armed, Jacque had taught her well. But in that same time of healing the sisters had imparted a debt and a duty to mercy, to the work of God, it lived deep in her soul.

She thought deeper, realized no flag of the nations truly owned her heart. She was privateer then, running under a letter of marquee granted by her own conscience, answering only to God himself. As such that made her escort, protector, her weapons had never spoken first in aggression, such would remain the case. But a bit of a problem, there. A privateer must of needs be a swift ship, cargo sacrificed to speed and the ability to turn in combat, hardened to all the weathers of the world, fit to challenge the eye wall of the storm. How could a privateer carry enough light to be of lasting value? She stopped by the rail, and for a moment thought of abandoning the analogy, of taking another.

She moved a few feet, stopped again, and smiled. So obvious. How many, how many hundreds had she known of who carried cargoes of light and yet rarely put to sea to reach their fellows for fear of the darkness that prowled and hunted? She chuckled, but without mirth. How many cargoes had her master, in and of himself, prevented from reaching port? How many? No, of course no one ship could carry any fraction of the amount needed, no matter the size, but one ship fit to go in harms way could engage the predators, could shock them into retreat or sink them to the bottom, such a ship could enable so many cargoes to make port. Silly, you already knew that. You told the Griffin that. What have I to fear? Torture? Death? Only to live without purpose. This is a purpose. What else do I need?

The thought of the martial art took her to think of her body. She looked down on herself, and smiled. Indeed, she thought, I wear a hull fit to serve as such. I can fight, I can work, I can master pain that cripples most. I know how to give pleasure as refuge or challenge to growth for either gender. Both find me attractive, often beautiful. She stood tall for a moment and allowed yet another thing to truly see the sun for the first time in years. She was proud of herself and it was not false pride. It had been so hard, so full of things at the utter extremes of the human condition, but she allowed she’d earned her pride, passing through hell and back not once but thrice only to emerge like the finest of tempered steels to ring true in the hand of God.

She made the prow, let the pride fade back. It was a good thing to know but not a thing to wear to be seen. The predators looked for that pride, they knew their enemy. They’d see it and gather in packs. Hers was not the only master she knew of. There were many, far to many, in Paris alone. If the predators found her, if they knew of her they’d surely gather in packs and while she fought running battles defending her own life she could do little to protect another. So it became obvious to her she’d not advertise her purpose, her mission. No, her advantage was speed, and stealth, to engage on point and then be gone. Truly she saw herself, set herself a ghost of the ocean that appeared between predator and prey in the dark of the night and was gone with the dawn leaving the sea clean behind her.

She turned away from the bow and laughed aloud at herself. Not since the first days with Indy had she entertained a fantasy of such nature, not since they’d been girls living on the charity of the sisters had she created such a dream and cast herself in the leading role. But, but, still, damn it all, there needed to be such in the world. And truly, she was as fit as any to take the part. For her, for her Lee Ann had stood in that role. She returned to the mess, and decided she’d measure her days by the number for whom she could claim that place in a time of need. She owed so many.

She passed away the rest of the day with a book, and slept an easy sleep that night. Her dreams of the night became a point of strangeness, they were the first in so long to be known to the next day. She’d walked in a garden, a large garden of beautiful flowering plants, and there had been many mirrors in the garden. In no mirror of that garden had she seen herself reflected back, not the self she had come to know in the days past, but the selves she might have become in another life. It was a strange dream, the sense of it clung to the following morning until she brought it forth to try and understand it.

The flowers were beautiful, the scent of them intoxicating, but the mirrors held her thought as would be supposed. To see yourself pass a glass and not see your own self but an image that looked like you from some other time, some other place, another person who wore your body? It was a puzzle that lasted ten minutes once she sat to think on it, a puzzle that brought a shock with the understanding.

She’d all but forgotten him, the funny strange beggar man who’d stopped her in the market and held her for an hour with a story. He’d spoken of a mirror like that, a mirror that reflected the intent of a thought. He said it had hung in the gardens of Babylon, was stolen by the Amazon. The Amazon had faded, melted into the world, but the mirror lived on. It gave her a shiver to remember the look in his eye when he’d cocked his head at her and squinted, said he saw the mirror on her. It matched to closely, the legend he told wanting to beg a few francs, it matched to well to what the old woman had said. She’d given him a ten franc note, and fled with her children.

Indy had spoken of her strangeness in the first days when she’d been in shock. She’d said few could endure her for long, they would leave confused and baffled. There had been that one afternoon of such terror and such love when Jacque had challenged the beast on the terrain of her soul, Indy had said it was particularly strong that afternoon. It had spurred Jacque to do what he did. She’d won her freedom that afternoon, her freedom and a man to love as poppa, and the sister she loved still. Her eyes filled, overflowed a bit, a tiny shower in the sunshine. Jacque was gone too, but he’d passed peacefully to old age, he slept with the sisters at the edge of the orchard. She wiped her eyes and smiled. Jacque would not tolerate less. “Woman child,” he’d said more than once, usually having set her or Indy on their rump for the tenth time in an hour, “toast your dead at any chance, they live on in you and they’ll appreciate the drink.” It was a reminder, a warning, so much he taught was so lethal. She had naught but water, water would do. She raised the glass to his memory.

So what was it, Jacque, what was it I did I didn’t know I was doing? She set the glass on a thigh and closed her eyes trying to remember that afternoon. It was warm, but not unduly hot. It was dusty, the barn always was, particularly in the practice room with all the hay laying about for them to land on. It was hard, it had been so long ago, and she’d been in such a state even then.

They left me for dead. Master was cruel, but not as cruel as they. His was studied, theirs vulgar. And all because I wouldn’t tell them my name. She shuddered, she didn’t need to go back there. A cabby had found her near death in the alley, a bloody mass of rags around her naked body. He’d loaded her in his cab and taken her to the convent, the nearest hospital was several hours away in those last days when rapid travel was a fast horse. She’d awakened in a room surrounded by nuns who were bathing where her skin had been flayed with a razor between the rapes. The pain was beyond bearing, she’d struggled to the panic of it. They had to hold her by force to get the first of the laudanum into her. She could still remember that, so clearly, mostly what she remembered were Sister Jean’s eyes as she held her hands so tightly while they waited out the minutes until the opium gave relief. And the days after, in shock, barely able to think, barely able to speak. When they named me the quiet, Sundown reflected. If the old woman was more than simply delirious, if the beggar man saw truly, then what they’d said had been near the surface then. Of course, there was so little left to cover and conceal.

It was a disturbing thought that it might be a real thing in her. She paced the deck, and her stride grew quick, the corners turned sharp. “It is power, it is power you’ll have, they will believe, they will believe and act to the belief. ” The old woman had said that over and over. She hadn’t understood her words, the man beside her had translated. She was wounded, dying, it was they who had led the Legion to the camp to make the rescue that freed her from the slavers.

She stopped, suddenly wondering. The timing would be right, had Jacque served among them then? Probably not, the legion was large, the company who’d taken down the slavers not large. Probably not.

She’d babbled on, the old woman had, and the man had listened intently, and wonder was on his face. He’d turned to her, had grasped her tightly to put her eyes on the old woman’s as he delivered her words. “Tell no one the name of your birth. It is not yours to give, never again. Never again. The day you speak the name of your birth you die with the next sun, but you live until you do. When you do the” she paused, and thought. What was that word he’d said? Khan, khantue, something like that. She couldn’t remember. The word was lost to the old woman’s eyes. They were Negro people, the darkest of their kind, ebony skin and dark eyes, and suddenly the eyes in that ancient face leapt up and took her. She believed, to the bottom of her soul believed, and for that moment it was such a thrill of terror. The old woman’s eyes released her after a moment, and filled with tears. She spoke another line, the man translated. “She says she hopes your Gods will be merciful to you for the weight of what you will carry.” The old woman pronounced four more words, they had no meaning to her, then or now. But if she’d spoken truly they were her name. She’d sighed, and smiled, and died on the spot.

Sundown stopped, and swallowed hard. What if? I’ve always thought it was just a strange ritual among their kind, but what if it was more? The man, he was young, strong, a warrior of his people. He spoke French, how common could that be? And he was amazed, terrified and amazed. Big and strong and fierce as he was he was terrified of the old woman as she spoke. She was his ally, he her caregiver, and still she frightened him. What if there was more to that sensation than just my own fatigue and shock?

I’d always thought that was it, dear God, I’d lived where twenty others had died, it hadn’t been two hours. They’d been seeking the gorgeous ebony girl they always showed beside me, they said we were a pair, would not sell us separate. The legionnaires had taken me to them to her demanding, I was the only one to survive. It was so hard to tell them I was the only one who had lived, to offer them the shallow comfort the one they sought had died quickly, she’d suffered very little. But what if?

She said I had the power to make them believe. What was I trying to make Jacque believe that afternoon? What was I hoping he would think? She made her way to her spot, plopped in the chair. I was wanting to not be there. I was hoping, that was it, I was hoping that he’d not notice me so much, he’d been looking at me for days, a funny look in his eyes, I was under his glass. He knew I was up against my fear, he knew it, dear Jacque knew I had to face it. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice me, all he did was slap my face and tear my dress off. He shocked me into fighting, the fear wouldn’t let me, not until my fear of him in that moment equaled the other.

A test, she thought. A test. Something simple, something safe. The bridge, I’ve never been to the bridge, it is off limits to passengers. I’ll go to the bridge. If I meet any of the crew I’ll pretend I’m one of them, I’ll hope it like I hoped Jacque wouldn’t look at me like that. If they let me pass I’ll know.

I’m crew, I work here. This is my ship, she’s mine. A funny thought, it came on her in a funny way. Having lived lesbian it was so easy, and so strange in the same moment, to think she’s mine about a thing from the world of men. She walked into the mess, and exited by the crew door. Beyond the door a hall, and stairs, the bridge was high, up those stairs. Up she went, and entering the next hall the radio man looked up from his set as she passed by. He looked quizzical, then shrugged and smiled, a friendly gesture, and went back to his work. Sundown shivered. He should have challenged me. I’m wearing a sun dress that leaves me hanging out the sides for goodness sakes. Hardly a duty uniform. She went on, found the next stairs and climbed. At the top she met the cook returning with the tray from having taken lunch to the bridge. He turned sideways to let her pass and nodded. Oh, lord have mercy, what am I doing, she thought. That’s two, and the cook knows me, he’s served up my meals.

She came to the last door, she’d been passing forward in the hall. This has to be the bridge, she thought. She was correct. She opened the door, stepped through and closed the door softly. They didn’t notice her at first, the mate sitting in the large chair surveying his world, senses attuned to his ship, nor did the seaman at the helm, his hands guiding the wheel in opposition to the waves holding the ship to a straight course. It was a place of power, she sensed it, this was where man became master, not of cruelty but of responsibility. It was so masculine it was arousing. What am I doing here? she thought. I’ve a report to give, something from below decks, some minor thing that needs an officers’ judgment.

She stood for a moment and the mate seemed almost to startle, shifting to turn and glance behind. She held her thought and watched his face. He was a good officer, she’d marked the men paid him the deference of respect, not fear. And while her thought lasted so did the look on his face, the one she’d seen as he worked the crew, his words commands they jumped to obey. As her thought faded so did the penetrating question from his eyes.

“Miss St. Marie. What are you doing on my bridge?” Firm words, but not angry.

“I’m, I suppose I’m lost. I was, well, I was wandering. Please, a thousand pardons. I don’t belong here.”

He smiled at her. “If you’d like a full tour of the ship I’d be delighted to show her off, but not while I have the watch.”

“Yes, yes of course, thank you,” she said and turned to flee. She had her answer. On her way back down the radio man started, and stared as she passed. Where had she come from? Had she scaled the bulkhead? He’d hear about this.

She passed back through the mess, got more water, and returned to her chair. Oh, my God. It worked. They believed, they believed I was one of them until I quit thinking it. Oh, God. What is this thing? It was a prayer.

*** *** ***

The ship was in port, the unloading well underway. For the remainder of the voyage she’d all but hidden, thinking and wondering and praying. Her train would leave the following afternoon, her bags were packed. The captain had been gracious, it would do no harm for her to remain in her cabin one more night. The last light of the day faded, the men worked under lights swarmed by insects. The watch changed, the mate entered the mess where she sat. Her deck chair was gone, there was far too much activity emptying the holds for her to be on deck. He was weary, he’d worked hard through the day. He took sandwiches from the tray, a beer from the cooler. His watch was over, in port he’d return to duty shortly after the sun. She tilted her head and smiled inviting him to company. They were alone in the mess, the cook had left the ship.

He came and sat across from her, while he ate they talked. The ships next port of call would be Sydney Australia, a long run at twelve knots. He said it was a long and lonely voyage. He looked at her and she saw the longing in him. He didn’t direct it at her, but she saw it. Perhaps I misused you with my test, she thought. Perhaps I can make amends. And you saw what I needed, you acted to help me. It was justification enough. Her flesh was accustomed, a much gentler desire had returned in the last days. She was bold, and she experimented. What could she make a man believe? They’d been at sea a month, she knew where he’d been. He would let her know if in his eyes she were to him as the sea was. It would show after so long alone. She spoke into her thought as the sea, mysterious deep, treasure waiting below and beyond.

“A long and lonely way, I do understand. I lost my husband in the great war, my children to the influenza. It all but destroyed me. I lived with a woman for the last decade, I could not bear a man to the memory. My lover set me free, she told me half the world was not enough for me, and she was right. You’ve been watching over me as I struggled to reclaim, well, the things I’ve loved with the other half, and much of it I’ve seen in you. You are of the other half of the world, and it has been a long, long time. Would you do me the honor of taking the helm, how is it you sailor’s put it, for my shakedown cruise?”

He looked at her, and his smile was one of wonder as he shook his head. “Miss St. Marie, as man or master I am truly honored you’d ask me, and more, to do us both the compliment to be so honest.” The sea was honest, unforgiving but honest, it was a thing he prized. “Let me scrub the day off. I know a place just beyond the docks where the rooms are clean, the beds large enough for us to do proper justice to a shakedown.” He left, and she waited tingling with anticipation. She had no idea the power she commanded, that she would inspire a legend set in verse.

She became the sea for him, the motions of her body the rolling swells upon the breast of the ocean; he rode above, the swift passing hull that cuts the wave clean, and the wave treasured the wake. In time she became the wind, the power of the storm, waves rising higher that they be cut the deeper, crashing upon the deck; he showed her master then, master as master should be: a force of indomitable will that the course hold true among the foaming waters and challenged the storm turned fierce, wild and uncontained. The sea demands endurance, with the sea his was phenomenal, such was his life, his truest love, and true it showed. In time the storm passed, the wake once again to be seen, the watch bells rang. She held him then, his head on her shoulder as he rested from the long watch. He smiled in his sleep, she could see the boy he’d been before he took the sea for mistress. She smiled, stroked his face and her thought became of his port, the safe anchorage where the sea is wont to show her gentlest side, the little waves lapping a lullaby at low tide, the gleam of moonlight on the waters. This she had to give, and delighted in the giving. She’d missed this for so long, this part when peace settled like a sleepy fog. She let matters of the sea depart her thoughts and he shifted as she did, opened his eyes long enough to kiss her cheek before rolling away to fall back into slumber. She thought back on the hours, truly, it had been hours, and yes, his face had been the face she’d seen as he stood his watch, before she’d let him see her as she herself, when he did what he loved and did so well. Until just now, when she’d dismissed the ocean from her thought.

If I can be the sea to a sailor I can be anything she thought, and gave herself to sleep.

*** *** ***

The Indian trains were nothing like France. They were crowded, dirty, irregular. It had taken a week of misery to make what would have been in France three days. But made it she had and the overburdened thing was chugging slowly away. Her bags sat beside her as a fact dawned. On the map it had seemed a tiny distance, here near the border of Tibet the pencil dot was a long way on foot. She had two bags and a trunk, it was all she could do to move them a short ways. This was a problem. What to do?

The people about were strange to her, nothing looked familiar. She heard no familiar tongue, no hint of a language she knew even a few words of. Other than the railway line the place was primitive, unchanged for thousands of years. The most modern thing to be seen was an old truck, with no wheels, it served for a vendors stand. She looked at the old machine and offered it a salute. “We have both wandered a very great distance from home, you and I,” she said aloud. No one would understand. She recognized the logo on the rusting hood, it had been made in America. It was further from home than she, hardly a comforting thought given its’ condition.

She took a pen from her purse and wrote her destination with it on the face of the trunk in English and French, and then copying from the brochure in what she hoped the local literates would read and the symbol for every currency she carried. Someone would notice. She drug the trunk to the edge of the platform, and sat on her bags. She’d expected there would be a station of some sort or another, a place where the stranger might gain advice and direction but if there was it lived in an individual, there was no building. She waited for what or who she knew not.

She waited several hours. Many had glanced, a few offered shy smiles, but none had tried to speak. A young mother had passed nursing her baby as she walked, hers had been the kindest glance but it carried a denial, and an apology, her hands were literally full. Sundown had returned her smile, and hoped a thought at her: I do understand. She did. The young mother made a gentle gesture, it might have been a blessing, and then gathered up her rambunctious toddler to continue down the street, her baby on one arm, her dinner on the other. A cart passed by and the driver halted, looking at her, looking at her sign.

He could make himself understood in broken bits of three languages. She stood and pronounced as best she knew her destination. He replied yes, then oui, pointed to the sun, and then three times to the east. Three days away, or in three days, one or the other. Sundown leaned her head onto hands forming a pillow for a moment, and repeated in three languages “A place to sleep?”

“Yes,” he replied, and came down to help her load her bags. She climbed onto the back of the cart, he tapped the ox that pulled it, and reversed directions. Perhaps half a kilometer later he stopped in front of a public building. He said “wait”, and entered, returning with two strong lads who unloaded her luggage. She smiled at him, thought gratitude as she bowed her head over pressed palms, a gesture she’d seen often in greeting and in parting. He returned the gesture, looking a bit surprised. She fished in the little pocket of her dress, came out with a silver half dollar from Hank. When she tried to hand it to him he smiled and refused the offer. “Is much more to karma,” he said, made the same gesture as the mother had from the driver’s seat of his cart as he left. Sundown smiled. Light everywhere, she thought.

The larger of the boys tugged at her sleeve, indicated she was to follow them. She nodded, and they led her into the building and up a flight of stairs to a room. The boys set her trunk on a low table, the bags beside, and were turning to leave when Sundown said “wait, a moment, please.” The didn’t understand her words, but they turned, curious, and then smiled with delight when she presented them each with a coin. The boys repeated the same word, several times, bowing as they left the room. They’d earned their coin, twice over, she now knew how to say “Thank You.”

“You paid them well,” came a voice in French, a man’s voice. He stepped around the corner and into her sight. She was instantly reminded of Jacque.

“No more than they earned, ferrying me up and teaching me how to say thank you,” Sundown replied, taking the man’s measure. No taller than she, but wiry muscle, quick eyes, the air of confidence.

“At a franc a word it will be an expensive language,” he laughed, and introduced himself. “I am Jean Luc. And you?”

“SQ,” she said, pronouncing her initials, “SQ St. Marie.” A sign, God? A sign for me?

“Come, SQ, you’ll need to settle up with the innkeeper. He can be a bit of a bandit, I’ll make sure you are not robbed. They trade rupee here, but if you’ve a well crafted trinket for a girl child you’ll get the better value in barter. He has seven daughters.”

“Seven daughters,” she laughed, opening one of the cases, considering.

“Yes, and two wives,” Jean Luc added.

It had ridden with her a long way, never lost, seldom looked at, she’d bought it for Marie. Marie had never gotten to wear it. Someone’s daughter should.

Jean Luc conducted her to the innkeeper and conducted business. He quoted a price Jean Luc protested, a lower one, Jean Luc seemed to waver. He looked perplexed, then enlightened, and turned to her. “The little necklace, if you will,” he said softly.

Sundown drew it from her pocket, understanding her every move was under the innkeepers eye. She meant to pass it to him slowly, as if parting with a treasure, which she was, but a girl child of perhaps eight years burst around the corner approaching her poppa, caught sight of the little gemmed flower at the end of the gold chain and stopped, wide eyed.

She was brown skinned, barefoot and in need of a bath, clearly she liked playing in the mud, but there was such delight on her face. Sundown looked to the innkeeper, to the girl, back to the innkeeper, her glance clear to read. The man, for the moment proud poppa and not business man, beamed. Sundown knelt, and beckoned the girl to her. She fastened the chain behind her head, and dropped the flower down the front of her tunic. She kissed her own fingers and pressed the little flower to the girls heart. The girl’s eyes were shining, there were tears there. “Tell him I bought if for my little girl’s fourth birthday that never came. Tell him his daughter has her smile, she does, I’d like her to have it.”

Jean Luc made the translation, and the innkeeper replied in a totally different tone of voice. “He says you are paid in full for seven days and he offers you thanks. He wants to know your daughters name that his child carry her gem to honor her memory.”

“Her name was Marie,” she said, and it didn’t hurt to pronounce it beyond a soft pang of longing. A brilliant drop of light, the light in the little brown girl’s eyes, stood alongside the name now, it didn’t hurt nearly so badly.

Jean Luc spoke to the innkeeper, the innkeeper to his daughter. The girl came to Sundown and took her hands, pressing them tightly for a moment before turning to speak to her father. The father smiled on his child, a gentle smile of appreciation and pride, and shooed her back around the corner. Sundown stood, the innkeeper bowed slightly and left.

“They serve a very good beer here,” Jean Luc said. “I haven’t the foggiest what it’s brewed from, but it’s good. Let’s have a mug and trade tales.”

The table was rough, the bench low, the mugs of hand thrown clay. Sundown sipped, and sipped again. The beer was indeed very good even served German warm. She smiled. “Excellent,” she said. “Tell me, what did the little girl say to her poppa?”

Jean Luc drew deep, sighed, and set down his mug. “She is an incredible romantic, that one,” he said. “She said to tell you she would carry Marie’s flower to a pretty place each day and show it to the flower. I’m sure she will, she’s sure Marie can see out through the stone. She hopes Marie will choose to come here.”

Sundown’s heart melted, tears took her eyes. “Oh, oh how sweet,” she said, wiping her eyes on a sleeve. What a hope. What a hope. Another drop of light formed, stood solid beside the first.

Jean Luc watched her face. When she’d gained control of the moment he said “these people here, they have a way of healing things,” he said.

“It makes perfect sense then that God shelters them here at the far end of the earth away from what I used to call civilization,” Sundown said, and meant every syllable. “I came to seek peace from the monks, I find I’ve found so much on the way.”

Jean Luc laughed, and drained his mug. “So did I,” he said, wiping foam from his mouth with a sleeve.

“Jean Luc,” Sundown said, and to old habit pronounced the name as she had before.

“Now, there was something more in that,” he answered, a bit of a warning in his eye.

Sundown stopped, and realized what she’d done. “I’m, I’m sorry. I should have told you, you carry the same name as my husband. It was habit, no more.”

“Your husband,” he said, looking at her left hand.

“My dead husband,” she replied.

“That’s two,” he said, and his tone was kind.

“Yes, two of three.”

He let the moment run, saw what she put forth for him to see, and signaled for another mug. “And so you come hoping for peace from the monks.”

“Yes.” A simple answer, sincere.

“Then you’ve come as far as you need go,” he said as the fresh mug landed in front of him.

“But, the monastery is…”
“Fifty kilometers, if you stay there you’ll be pitching a tent on the rocks and they speak a language there the local people don’t know.”

“But, but…” Sundown protested, becoming confused and a bit distraught.

“Oh, yes, the pamphlet,” Jean Luc said. “I read it also. I made the walk, that was a personal reconnaissance I gave. I don’t know who published it. But I do know that having come this far I’ve found what I needed. Give it a day, or two, you’ve a week here. The innkeeper gave you till the next train down.”

Sundown shook her head and looked about. This was the end of her journey then and home for a week. What fortune, but what to complain of? “Is there magic here?” she asked.

Jean Luc smiled. “I’ve suspected that myself.”

“Then perhaps those pamphlets we don’t know who published, perhaps they carried a charm, found their way to those who needed the journey more than stone walls?”

Jean Luc laughed, and drank. “I’ve suspected that as well,” he said.

It had to be asked. “You came here seeking peace. How long ago?”

He turned his head a bit and thought. “I’d put it five years now. Give or take. Calendars don’t have much meaning, only seasons.”

“Why?” she asked, and then wished she hadn’t, it was terribly forward.

He looked at her, and the smile went soft, a bit sad, but his eyes didn’t dim that much. “I had a lover once. I got him killed with an act of stupid greed in a God forsaken place the locals called Viet Nam, Indochina, that a way,” he said, pointing to the south and east.

“Then, then women are not your way,” she said.

“Not then.”

“A year ago men were not mine,” she replied.

“And now?” he asked, and there was a mischievous smile on his face, he was looking at the door.

“Now, well, now I don’t bother to notice unless circumstances require me to.” Sundown turned up her mug to get the last and when she put it down started a bit. The young mother who’d passed her on the street was sitting in Jean Luc’s lap, an arm around his neck.

“You see what is,” he laughed as she kissed him, a peck on the cheek. “My wife, Nara,” he said, and the woman smiled and bowed her head, her smile quick and bright.

Sundown returned the bow and looked at his hands, a quick glance, but a glance he saw. He reached into his shirt and drew forth an intricately knotted cord, then into hers to pull forth its mate. “We wear our token around our necks to be closer to the heart,” he said, putting hers back and patting the full breast on the way by. “I’m late for supper, she’s come to collect me.”

“Oh, dear,” Sundown said, “I hope I’ve not gotten you a scolding.”

“I doubt it,” Jean Luc said as they stood. “she’s not had to come find me in a fortnight. She forgives me a few. But I’ll probably wash dishes as penance.”

“Will I see you again?” Sundown asked.

“Oh, most definitely. It is a delight to speak my birth tongue again if nothing more. And there is a man due here in a day or three. In him you’ll meet what the pamphlet spoke of. He is from the monastery but unlike the others he travels and preaches the best sermons I’ve ever heard. He teaches from the heart and give or take seven different holy texts including the Christian bible. He is gifted, touched. If there is a newcomer in the crowd, well, I’ve never seen one that didn’t come away thinking he’d written his sermon from the text of their life. He is a holy man of God.”

Sundown smiled and made the gesture of parting which both returned. They walked away arm in arm and the shadows changed direction as they passed. When she looked a large bowl of lamb stew had appeared before her and her mug was full.

Five days passed, delightful days. She wandered and soaked her soul in the simple peace of the place. One afternoon marked itself indelibly into her memory. The girl child who wore Marie’s flower found her, took her by the hand and led her to a charmed place, her favorite place, and it was an afternoon of magic as the child communicated with her in gestures and glances, with pretty things she knew of in that place, they didn’t share a word in common. Sundown had to work not to cry. Jean Luc told her the people believed in reincarnation, Sundown held in her heart that if they understood true then she also would hope for Marie to come to this place, to be reborn to either of the innkeeper’s wives. She couldn’t ask for a better big sister or a more peaceful place to live a life.

The sixth day passed, the train was due sometime the next day. She’d packed up her things and was in her room choosing small gifts to leave with Jean Luc and Nara, a few others. She carried a fair amount of jewelry with her, she planned to lighten the load for the return trip. What in Europe was a small thing to hardly be noticed, something almost required, was to these people such a treasure.

She made her rounds, thanking each in the few words she knew, practicing in her thought that they would know her gratitude for the gift the world they maintained had been to her. Such a gift. She’d almost made it back to the inn when Jean Luc fell in step with her.

“Come, he’s here. He wants to meet you privately. This is most unusual for him to ask to see someone before he preaches. I didn’t tell him, SQ. He knew you were here, don’t ask me how.”

He led her to a small house, little more than a hut. A lamp glowed within. Inside the door the floor belied the exterior, it was teak and very well crafted, smooth and solid. The stone walls were covered with tapestries. Incense burned beside the lamp. A man sat on a thick cushion on the floor, facing away from the door, facing a small alter that sat in the corner. The alter had a single sphere supported by an intricate latticework of silver seeming metals, perhaps pewter. The sphere itself was a stone of many colors blended and flowed and no matter how hard Sundown tried she could not quite make the pattern come into focus. She’d asked if there was magic in this place, in the moment she knew her answer, and the answer was yes.

The man made an end to his meditation and turned to face them. Jean Luc started to bow, and Sundown made ready to follow suit, but he smiled and rose to his feet with a graceful motion and a smile that put the formality away. “Please, be welcome,” he said in perfect French, gesturing them in. Sundown stepped forward, Jean Luc stayed back.

“If you would be so kind,” he said, addressing Jean Luc, “tell the people I’ll speak on the morrow. This night I’ve a work to do. Oh, and the door, if you would.”

Jean Luc looked at Sundown, and smiled as he nodded. “Of course,” he answered.

The door was heavy planks, well fit, the latch a fall bar lifted on a leather passed through a small hole. Jean Luc took the leather from the bar, hung it on a peg. When the door closed behind him the bar fell, easily opened from the inside, solidly locked to the out. Sundown shivered, and could not name to what sensation.

“Sundown, the Quiet one of Saint Marie’s in the south of France,” he said to her, and the shiver reversed directions and vanished.

“So I choose to call myself,” she said, her own voice seeming very far away. In one sentence he’d proven himself beyond anything ordinary, she’d told no one what the Q in her name stood for, not in years.

He approached, paused a bit when it seemed she would shy away. She felt herself a filly, nervous in the presence of the man, not used to his ways. He nodded, and held his ground. She looked at him: he was old, ancient beyond reckoning, he wore a body no older seeming than her own. He circled her at the range of an arm, never touching her even though she could feel his hand as it glided past so close. “How truly beautiful you are,” he said as he came back round to the front. “Sundown,” he said, “we have much to speak of this night. Many things will not be in words, many words do not exist to fit. Do not fear me, please, we serve common cause. You have passed three tests, extreme tests, and you are ready. The Almighty has brought you to me tempered to a purpose only He knows. He has entrusted me the task of honing. Do you understand?” As he fell silent Sundown felt a relief, a soft flowing sensation that began in her throat, freed her voice.

“The concept perhaps,” she said, “but I’ve no idea the method.”

The monk smiled again, and it was a young smile. “For your part something very much a part of you,” he said. “It will be familiar, comfortable, that you not know great fear to the other things that must pass between us. A trifle of a kind distraction as it were.” He stepped back into the room and Sundown followed pace for pace. When he reached the center, where the cushions waited, he shrugged and the robe fell from his body. He caught the garment, tossed it across a low bar alongside the wall, and looked at her. He spoke no word, only waited.

Sundown realized she was as alone as she’d ever been. He awaited her decision, he was making sure no one could intrude into the time of her thought. She felt the warmth of blood in her cheeks, a soft blush. She began undressing, doing it slowly and from the first felt his eyes on her, his glance sincere compliment to what she revealed. When she was also nude he stepped close and held out his hands.

I should be terrified, or aroused beyond all sensibility, she thought, and I’m neither. He touched her, viewed her as a blind man does a statue. His hands passed over all of her with no crude focus, simply passing over all. She noted in an almost abstract manner that where his hands had been her skin delivered such exquisite sensations, the tiny breeze flowing through from the high windows a caress she’d have shivered to, perhaps given voice to in sighs at any other time. He took her by the hands and settled to the cushions bringing her down with him, settling face to face in the modified lotus of love making.

“What a truly kind thing that was,” he said as for a moment only Sundown recalled her last lover, “to be the sea for a sailor man that his loves not conflict. You see, in such kind thought your chastity lives untarnished.”

“Oh,” Sundown said softly, she couldn’t be surprised, not much, not anymore.

“Yes, beautiful woman, you are transparent to me for this time. It must be so that my work go forward. We are as we are in symbol of that. I’ll not look again, not once you leave this house.” He lifted his hands, lifted her breasts. “Pierre favored this one,” he said, indicating which was which by a thumb stroking a nipple, “while Marie the other. Brother and sister, it is little to wonder at.”

“Who are you?” Sundown asked.

He smiled, and shrugged. “A man, as you are woman. You carry a thing, recently discovered. I carry many such things, I live as I do in accommodation of them. But I am a man, I was born of a mother to a good father, what I am now was many, many years in the making. Some of those things we’ll share tonight, such as you are able, such as will aid rather than burden you.”

She felt him moving beneath her, growing a bit, probing. She shifted, rolled forward that he have the better angle. She felt herself becoming wet, relaxing on the inside without swelling in her outer parts, an unusual sensation, one had never, ever happened without the other. He shifted a bit, closed his eyes and entered her, swelled into her without motion, pausing for a moment in the narrow band of greatest sensation just within, the pause passed through her as a shiver and she was a bit embarrassed that the giggle came of its own. To think, a giggle in such a serious thing.

“That was such a fine thing,” he said without opening his eyes and then filled her completely, rapidly running in slender to the touch at the limit before swelling large with a force to empty her lungs in a long moaning sigh. It was for her utter perfection, it could not be done better. His hands found her hips, pulled her closer, opened her against him to feel satin ice take circuit with the fire inside.

“This thing we do, to you, to many, is more than simply a means to bring children. It is learned as the only time when the cloaks and covers may fall off and hearts and souls be free in the open air. Many are injured, betrayed in such times. Many give and receive between them and live strengthened by the encounter. For such as we the question is what marks the line between these two groups? Not the body, certainly.”

Sundown tried to form an answer, but the words were so slow, so slow compared to the images, and the sensations that came with them: Jean Luc, asking a permission she granted trembling, lifting her to hold her open to him, entering her gently and praising her courage, Lee Ann’s breast against her face, nursing her, stimulating her with delicate fingers, both memories stood against the times before. The line was so clear to see. One received what the other gave, what had been before did neither, only consume and destroy and waste.

“Exactly,” he said, and with his reply she saw herself as the Griffin had, as the sailor had, and it was such a thing to know how they had seen her. She’d had no idea what she’d given in those moments, had no idea the scope of her gift. It was simply how one treated a lover. He was pleased with her answer, she knew it, it rose in her, kissed against the beginnings, and settled back.

“There are other times, less easily known,” he began, and drew her close against him, “when much greater things pass between people. Lives often spin around these points and the center goes unknown.” It was the first pain he showed her, Lee Ann’s tears from the bedroom door. “It was her greatest gift to you,” he said. “When you return you’ll know how to set the love between you to balance. She waits hoping against hope itself. She isn’t sure.”

“It is not enough, not for any of us, to hold only half the world in our hearts. Why, why would she tell me that and not take it for herself?”

“Ah, yes indeed. Such a good question. She told you that and wondered it herself.” She felt him flex inside her, it carried the remainder of his thought unspoken.

Of course, that is what I need to bring her, that answer, find it and use whatever is needed to bring it to her. I’ve a gift, I can use it there.

He laughed out loud, a merry sound, and kissed her cheek. “Of course.”

For a bit, perhaps a minute, things were still and quiet between them. He didn’t want to do what had to happen next. He was thinking, judging how best to least hurting. The next thing he would show her would be true, in absolute truth, and yet for her a terrible pain to close that wound so it might never again leave her vulnerable to such as she’d taken for a master. He wanted it over early, to help her endure her pain and let it settle back deep before he released her from the knowing, he wanted very much to make very sure it settled where he wanted it to, that she took from it what was needed.

He began to move a bit, and in her it was the lava rising against the mountain cap. “Many, many times gifts are given and the giver only knows the reason in their heart, the mind never knows.”

She saw then children, many, many children and the longer she looked there were even more children passing to an impossibly far horizon. Children laughing, playing, squabbling and crying, children. The field of children began to move beneath her, the children grew fewer as she flew. After a moment there were edges to the group and mothers also, then fathers behind the mothers. The children faded, she saw the mating that had produced the children and then the mothers were gone as well. The sky went dark, fearsome dark, the world unbearably loud. She saw the fathers, and with a start of panic she saw among them Jean Luc, her husband, and he lived. She cried out and struggled, she could not help it.

He held her, showed his strength until the moment passed, until she’d calmed herself. He moved a bit deeper, matched the force of the sensations he compelled on her body to balance what lived in her heart. He reversed the flow of time, set it to its’ normal direction and the scene played forward. They were resting, weary, that night and the five before had been endless carnage, they were twenty where once two hundred had mustered. It came suddenly, the shock and the agony.

She’d felt its equal before, had she not it might have killed her. She’d hung in her bindings then, to weak to scream, soaking wet in total agony as the lash came yet again. She knew that level of pain. Her love for her man was true, so true, she’d have willingly endured such every week of her life to not have to see what he showed her. He had no bindings to hang in, only his will, no considered master to judge the limits of the strength hidden beyond his own sight, only fate. He crawled to the machine gun, his legs ruined stumps, his life draining away. He raised himself on it, propped himself over a sandbag and worked the action, clenched teeth, clenched fingers on the trigger, and began to fire. She saw his eyes, saw the immensity of the final mortal strength her man committed that he might see clearly, shoot strait and deadly, he did before he died and nineteen men behind him scrambled from the trap and ran to live to father the endless field of children that were suddenly back before her eyes.

He drove her into orgasm, reached in and set it to explode and in the flames wrote across her heart he died, yes, he died as true a hero as there is and suddenly the children were on her, closing in, rank on rank of them touching her as she trembled beyond the ability to will a motion or make a sound, tiny hands, thousands of tiny hands touching her everywhere, thousands of little eyes taking a bit of her pain to themselves, such as they could bear and smiling as they gave way for the next, and the pain was gone, exhausted, and still there were little hands, little eyes smiling as they caressed every nerve in her body. Thank you, each said. Thank you. We know. We do know, we knew it before we were born. We’ll not know his name, or yours, but we know. Thank you. She collapsed in his arms fainting beneath the immensity of it.

While she rested in the faint he worked, quickly, with precision, setting the memories to return as a memory of a dream, set the children to live in her heart unknown to her that she never again feel barren. She had prevailed against such testing. He considered her as she was. Herbs, herbs are good, she’s wise enough to know some secrets of the craft. She works intimate close, she touches with hands as well as heart and talent and a false memory grew, one she’d never need challenge, the Chinese arts of pressing and pricking to relieve pain, give pleasure, it lived in her, she’d learned of it from a woman aboard the ship, she’d expand it to fullness later. Savat, boxing and sword, add a bit more, the nerve holds so she might control and not do damage, from Jacque, of course from Jacque, who else? There were other things, deeper things. He left memories, paths to memories, she would find them when they were needed. None enabled as he was would want to attempt ill will on her, not with what he left loaded. Her sensuality was so acute, he arranged that it might at times ride with her gift for another to feel it, some could not, for themselves. Her heritage would not support such continuously but she was able for short periods. Several such things happened, and before she reclaimed thought she was a good bit larger than before.

He’d finished the deep work before she stirred and as her eyes fluttered open he kissed her lips, used a bit of skill that she’d know how truly impressed he was with her. “You see, so many of those moments carry such ramification.”

“Oh, oh my God,” she stammered. The little aftershocks she still felt equaled what most could give. “That was, oh, that was so very intense.”

“Intense,” he said. “It was, it needed to be.” He watched her eyes as the memory of the memory went passed, noticed it rode so much easier than before, the pain balanced against the knowledge. That would hold, she could come to peace with that. “Always understand that no event occurs in a vacuum, or in the dark, the sound and the shadow of an event may run very long, or short, but no event is without either.”

For many long minutes she continued to rest and he stroked in her as she rested, now muting her sensations, setting them to reorder the rhythms of her body. “I know what you carry,” he said, when her heart was slowed and regular.

“Then you know more than I,” she replied, making conversation while savoring his motion.

“It is a thing long lost, actually. I’d thought it only a matter of legend.”

“They lived deep in the African jungles,” she said. He looked and saw the ancient face, the eyes, how it had come to pass. “They’d journeyed half a continent on foot when they found me.”

“And they were looking for her,” he said, putting before her eyes the ebony princess.

Sundown nodded, and swallowed. “Yes.”

“Have you ever wondered what would have happened had none of you lived?” he asked.

She had not. She gave it a thought, shuddered a bit. “If, if what I was told was true it would have been a thing of plague killing thousands.”

“It could have been. It had become a thing of legend, one of several I and a few others watch for against the chance the legend began from fact.”

She looked at him and he denied his eyes, concentrating instead on the delicate feel of her as inner fluids thickened with the motion, the way she stroked without moving. She really deserved a connoisseur’s appreciation. He distracted her from the thought and she responded by reaching to him for the first time.

“You have a power that will need wisdom,” he said slowly, a man speaking to maintain his control. “You have all the pieces of wisdom now, I think. Only know a few things more, just a few.”

“What things will I need to know?” she asked, beginning to move with him, for him, balancing with hands on shoulders.

He waited a moment, not entirely an act. “To see what is, to understand…” and he paused for a moment before continuing, “that as you are you can cause a thousand hurts healing one, or deal one little hurt and spare the thousand. It is a matter of balance, and justice.”

“My mentor said much the same,” she said, beginning to quicken her tempo.

“Jacque was a wise man,” he replied. “Visit him often, have a good wine on hand when you do.”

Sundown laughed, and cried, in the same instant, her body carried the sound to him as vibrations. “I loved him so much, found him so late in his life.”

“Better to end your life pillowed in such love than to waste it in ignorance when young,” he said, beginning to give thought to stalling other things until after they’d finished. She was putting heart and soul into the act, she always had, it was so much a part of her to live that the scales hang to balance. He could sense her without thought and in truth this left him more rather than less open to her. She’s a delightful lover he thought, it’s not fair of me to hold away what she gives to think such structures. It was as selfish as it was noble when he put away the other thoughts, setting her back to her beginning places that she might accompany him in fact.

It still took a long time, his control from a centuries long life, hers from mastering so much pain she would endure to savor. When at length he allowed them relief, release, he added a bit of an illusion: for what seemed to her a very long time, although in fact only a matter of seconds, she rode writhing on the peak of a geyser that ran hot and cool and electric in her before evaporating away leaving no trace. He shared in her sensation more than his own, what she added made it so very, very unique indeed.

They’d washed and dressed and were at his table when he resumed his purpose. “I am second sighted,” he said, and she had no doubt of that. “There is another storm gathering, it will grow out of the first. You should leave France soon, you’ll be needed to help free her later. Go to the new world, go to America.”

Sundown nodded. “There is more?”

He nodded. “Yes, much more. It is most likely you will live beyond all others of your generation, it is a part of this thing you carry. Your body will not age, it will be as it is now in the peak of a perfect mature woman until you are ready to pass on. But Sundown, the years will become long for you. Always, always keep youth about you, the nobility of those who live in hope and dream, guard well against cynicism and callous disregard. Those become dangers as we truly age. This night we shared bodies but it was not a needed thing. In your eyes I could have done all in an instant and you’d have benefited but never known the source.”

Sundown smiled at him, touched his hand. “I enjoyed it deeply, most truly I’ve never even dreamed a lover such as you. I don’t begrudge sharing a bit of my overactive libido if you can find some, some sustenance in it. Please, do not make an apology to me.”

He took her hand, and kissed it before setting it free. “I did enjoy very much, it was more than sustenance to me. So rarely can I allow myself a woman’s touch. But Sundown, you must think on this also. Your libido is a powerful and driving force in you because there you’ve had to defend yourself so often. So many have marked your sensuality and thought it was a road to ride roughshod over your soul. None have succeeded. Even that master of yours, skilled as he was in his cruelty, could not. With each successful defense it has actually grown, become more powerful, more subtle in the things it takes to itself. In fact it powers a great deal of you, holds much of your love. In the world at large it is far beyond most. What to you is simple and casual offered as a small gift can do harm by setting slight in comparison what others might offer. Be careful with the thing. Give no more than you can teach, what they can learn and pass on to another. Do not let the memory of you cloud a lifetime, glorious as that memory would be.”

Sundown blushed full, had to look down at the table. “I’d, I’d never thought of it that way.”

He laughed, and lifted her head. “No, you hadn’t. Why should you? You don’t think yourself above your fellows, why would you think that? In a night you might do harm. In a week teach respect. Given a month, with a student willing and able, elevate the art for six generations to come. Just be wise with it. You know as I do most of the thing is a matter of setting the mind into a fantasy that frees the body, this you can do, induce such intense beyond the reach of most peoples understanding.”

“I will remember that,” she said.

“Think on this also. Is it so very different, the dreams, the fantasies we take to enable the pleasure of our bodies, are they so very different from the dreams that power the rest of our lives? You touched on that with the sailor man when you were experimenting. You did him no harm, by the by. He has several very good women around the world, as well he might. But think on your purpose. He loves the sea, his ship, to command a world with respect and responsibility to every life and every cargo in his care. He’ll never marry, or marry very late, there is no way for his first great love to coexist with the love of a family. His is an extreme case, but how many others live with contradictory loves in them? How many suffer to trying to hold them both in the same moment?”

“Quite a few, I should suspect,” Sundown answered, beginning a count in her head of those she knew, giving up rapidly. The number was very large.

“Yes, indeed. You, if you’re willing, can help many of them. You’ve the sensitivity and sensuality to gain intimacy quickly, in flesh or in thought, try and leave the memory of yourself as a bridge between their loves. Look and see them in their fullness and be to them what is needed to make peace between the loves they carry. Some you’ll not be able to but I think you’ll surprise yourself at how many you can.”

“To make peace between the loves they carry,” she said, and thought of Lee Ann.

He said nothing, seeing her thought, but smiled inwardly. She had the essence of the thing understood. In a decade or two when she’d had time to master the nuances she’d be such a force. Good things would happen where she was, no mistaking that.

“Yes, help them make peace between the loves they carry. When there is peace there then sin and wickedness and evil have so little to work with they often simply starve to death and the world is a better place.” He stood, he was satisfied in what he saw, more than satisfied, really, he was delighted.

They walked to the door and it was instinctive to turn and embrace. For a moment, just a moment, he took her into the fullness of his heart. She could endure no more than a moment knowing the struggle he’d lived for three hundred years. He took her in and showed her what she’d been to him, what he was confident she would remain. His was a huge world, senses orders of magnitude above his fellow humans, loves and passions to power his years that left her staggered and amazed at the idea he’d been able to gain anything from her, much less the amount he showed. Hope, he lived on hope, and she was hope to him for far more than the one night.

He kissed her lips, took possession of her mouth and drew back from her what she could not carry in comfort from the moment before, left in its place a peaceful dream to take her through the night. When their lips parted they stood for a bit and simply gazed.

“Sundown Quiet Saint Marie, be at peace, now while you can,” he said as he opened the door onto the night. “Return to your home in the morning, make safe what you love against the storm to come, that which you can’t take with you. It will be a harsh and horrible storm larger than the one before. Watch closely to the east, you’ll know when you must leave. God go with you,” he said, and closed the door behind her.

She walked by starlight to the inn, it was just closing, the last of the day headed out to sleep off overindulging in their excellent beer. She went to her room and slept the night through like a baby cuddled on her mother’s bosom, which was exactly what he’d intended.

It was a faster trip, this time. The train was going downhill for one thing. In Calcutta she exchanged her tickets, sold some jewelry and booked passage on a true liner, a fast ship that would slow only for the passage of the canal between Calcutta and Marseilles. Luck was with her but she had to hurry. The ship sailed an hour after she boarded.

They cleared the canal, entered the Mediterranean sea. The tugs fell away and the captain set the ship to her new heading. Sundown stood at the bow and thrilled as the ship surged beneath her feet, thrilled at the wave building so rapidly and the wind brought into her face with their speed. Take me home. Take me home you beautiful lady of the seas, fly if you can, sail if you must, but take me home. Indy is waiting for me, and Lee Ann as well. She’ll not deny me, not just one more night. She’ll not deny me, I’ll give her what she’s given me, I’ll give her back the other half of the world. I know where the lock is, I have the key. Take me home.

Collections and Series Link Pages

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Strange World Indeed

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Me and BillyRay: Prologue, Of Hope and Shovels

Monday, March 28, 2011

The Well: First Blood

Saturday, March 26, 2011

The Well Ch 3: Cordlin

Thursday, March 24, 2011

SQ: Pilgrim