AN: Ok, so the last one was a bit of a cliff hanger and also a bit short, and I had this one written, and toooo much time on my hands, so I typed it and here it is. This marks the end of Part Two. R+R! 3
Part Two: Ayem
"Chandler! Sera Sarethi! Maissel! Open up, quickly! We need you!" The door rattled on its ancient hinges. Maissel looked up, mildly perturbed, from his breakfast of saltrice porridge and stewed marshmerrow. It was not every day someone came banging on his door. Three loud knocks, as of fists, broke in quick succession on the wood, loud as cracking stone.
"Wake up, Chandler! This is urgent!"
"You had better answer," murmured Maela softly. She watched him with those soft eyes from her seat on the hearth. Her legs were tucked underneath her body, her silky smooth black hair pulled over one bare shoulder for her brush's lick. She wore her Ashlander garb, as always; the tan kresh linen skirt hung with bones, with rattles and racer plumes; the thin blouse that bared her smooth shoulders; the pale chitin boots.
"I suppose," grated the chandler reluctantly, pulling his eyes away from her and pushing himself to his feet. He crossed to the door.
"Finally!" exclaimed Yakin excitedly as the chandler's face appeared. "I thought you'd gone, or something. Maissel, you've got to get out here!" He spoke breathlessly, struggling to get the words out, and his red hair was in disarray all over his youthful face.
"Calm down, boy," growled Maissel, opening the door a little wider. "What is it?"
"The Ashlanders are here!" squeaked the boy, his smooth cheeks flushing as he stared down at the chandler from his inch or so of an advantage. "And they want her!" His eyes – and finger – shot past Maissel toward a queasy looking Maela.
"So you must come now, both of you!" he went on, "or I don't know what will happen! They're all waiting, Sera! And they've got weapons!"
The chandler stared up at the boy, into him, past him, for a few seconds, his wide mouth set in a stubborn, surly line. Then he spoke, in a tone like grinding rock.
"Tell them we are coming."
Yakin's mouth fell open, and his eyes popped. "Tell them? Are you crazy? You can't wait; you've got to come now!"
"Do as I say, boy!" growled Maissel fiercely. "I will be along shortly. I need a moment to put my boots on. Go!" He shut the door firmly on Yakin's protests, turning away swiftly. His guar hide boots scuffed over the tiled floor.
His eyes met Maela's across the room. She had not stirred from her seat by the fire. They stared for a long moment, trading saturated glances.
Maissel spoke. "The Zainab have come for you."
"They have," agreed Maela, voice quiet and calm. She looked away, to the spasming light of the fire.
"What will you do?" grated the chandler. There was a horrific, loose suspension in his muscles, like an arrow at the top of its arc.
"What I must do, Maissel," she murmured. "Return to my people."
Muscles rippled over the chandler's jaw, in his temples. "Why?" his voice scraped.
Maela's gaze softened sadly, meeting his hard eyes gently as she got to her feet. "They are my people, Maissel. I cannot leave them forever. I must return."
"They cast you out," he hissed back, through gritted teeth. "They banished you for refusing a mer! You would go back to that? To him?"
"Maissel –" she began, but the chandler interrupted immediately.
"Stay here," he growled desperately. "Live here. With me."
"And give up who I am?" snapped the girl, face contracting in anger. "Give up my way of life, my people, my ancestors, to live with you? You demand too much, fat-smith! Why don't you consider leaving? You come with me!" She glared at him, and suddenly the Mask Perilous had shrouded her features, its eyes blazing like coals in the wind.
"I demand much?" replied the chandler in a quiet voice, his teeth grinding visibly. "I demand much?" he shouted suddenly. "You ask me to leave my ancestral home, my home for many times the years you have lived!"
"The Mask laughed scornfully. "What is a home?" sneered Maela nastily. "Settled folk weakness! The Zainab do not need homes! Or is it that I am too young, you nasty old –" But Maissel cut off the rest of her words.
His hands seized her face, seized the Mask, cupped its fine jaw, his fingers curved behind her skull, and pulled her to the tips of her toes and the Mask's furiously pursed lips up to his own. And the Mask melted at his touch.
"Maela," he breathed down to her when their lungs had nearly run dry. His rough fingers stroked her dimpled cheeks. "I took you in. They banished you."
"I know, my eaving," whispered Maela back, her voice breaking as her eyes began to glisten.
"Then stay with me," he rumbled.
The girl bowed her head, pressed herself against Maissel's chest. She spoke into his shirt.
"You took me in, gave me comfort, warmth, succor… love. You filled the longing, broken places inside of me. You are the only reason I was able to forgive them. But, Maissel, I have forgiven them, and I must return."
The pause after her words seemed to stretch out forever. She looked up hesitantly, at his neck, at the bottom of his jaw. His face was turned away, staring. Then she was stumbling backwards from the rough push of his hands, and a low, unearthly moan was echoing through the room, like the roar of an injured beast. She stared, as the noise went on and on, pouring from the mer's throat, his head thrown back, turned partly away from her, his hands clenched in his grey hair as his lungs strained and the tendons bulged in his neck.
And abruptly there was silence; silence as Maissel's mouth snapped abruptly shut and his arms lowered to his sides, and all his self-control returned to straighten his spine and smooth his face and eyes with blankness. He turned to her, but his eyes did not touch her; they stared, bereft and empty, somewhere over her shoulder.
"Come on," he grated. His voice was devastatingly normal, terrible, horrifying when it came from the owner of those eyes. "There is no time. They are waiting."
"Maissel!" gasped Maela, but he had vanished into Vos' cobblestoned streets, the door swinging, creaking behind him, open on the pale sunlight of midmorning. She ran, but she could not catch that narrow figure, so fast were his longer legs working; his loose, holy trousers whipped as he fled. Her heart thudded in her ears as she chased between the humble stonemold buildings, as the bitter wind sliced through her clothes, ran its empty, mocking hands over her flesh, as sobs snagged in her throat. She had to talk to him, make him understand, feel his arms, his hands, his flesh one last time if she could not make him join her. She had to reach him.
But she did not; the rawboned, raw hearted old mer reached the town's plaza a good thirty seconds before she did, so fast did he stride. The town was assembled, milling and whispering and glaring at her together there on the ancient flagstones, wrapped up tight against the winter morning's chill. The people were a faceless blur; she could see nothing but Maissel. She drew up short, fighting for calm; she would not cry, not in the open like this. Maissel stood on the edge of the crowd, talking quietly with the white-haired priest and his apprentice. The priest nodded to the chandler, then patted him on the arm gruffly as he spotted Maela over the mer's shoulder. She stared, blank faced and numb as the mer approached, his austere grey robes swishing with his steps.
"Come," he said with grave simplicity. She stared up at him silently, and he put an arm around her shoulders. She nearly shuddered at his touch; his was not the comfort she wanted. Oh, but her heart felt as though it had been torn in two. The wind whistled; the crowd murmured threateningly. "Your people have come for you at last, girl," said the priest at her side as he led her toward the gates. His rough voice was kindly, if firm. "It's time for you to go home." Maela stared past him, to Maissel, to her mer, her grey haired, wiry old mer standing there in his loose clothes, watching them without expression. Would it end like this? Would he ask her to stay with him again? She did not know how she would answer, if he did. She did not know if she could answer. Would he go with her, if she asked again?
"Wait," she said, stopping the priest. "I must thank my host before… before I go." Her own voice, so seemingly calm and collected, horrified her.
"Of course," murmured the priest. "But – you must be swift. Yours are not a patient people."
They swung around to approach the chandler. He watched, narrow face blank but eyes burning like Red Mountain's crater. Maela took a few steps more toward him when the priest stopped.
"I… wished to extend my thanks for the gift of your hospitality," she said, staring at his chest, the solid flesh on which she had pillowed her head so often in the last few days. That comfort, that warmth was just a few hours passed, and just a few steps away; but all dead, all gone. The eyes of the crowd pressed in on her, seeming to squeeze her skull like a vise.
"Anyone would have done as much for a stranger in need," answered Maissel coldly.
Maela gave a single shudder. The cold; that was it. Of course it was. "I am sorry," she said softly, "that I cannot reciprocate with a gift of equal value. Unless – unless you could take the hospitality of the Zainab, in turn?" She could not breathe.
His nostrils flared. "My home is here," he growled. "As yours, it seems, is in the yurts."
Air drained slowly from her lungs, whispering over her numb lips.
"It is my sorrow." She spoke in the barest whisper.
The chandler shrugged his narrow shoulders scornfully. "Sometimes a gift acts as a seed, begetting others," he replied, and suddenly his face was twisted in pain, "and sometimes the fruit it bears is void. Return to your tribe, Maela," he snarled, turning away. "They await."
And indeed they did. They waited as the priest steered a numb Maela toward the town's gates, as the crowd parted in a whispering, hissing wave before them. They waited just outside the town, a silent, motionless mass on the rocky path, bristling with pale chitin weapons and spiked armor. A hasty contingent of guards had been scraped together to hold the gates should the Ashlanders attempt an attack; Vuroni Drenim, looking awkward and puny next to his mother with her hammers and gnashing teeth, spoiling for a fight in her leather apron; a few others, the Elvuls and Andranos, short bladed scythes in hand and glinting in the weak sunlight. She passed between them without truly seeing.
The priest stopped beneath the gate's arch, and Maela went on, mechanically, blindly. The Ashkhan, in full armor, his face covered by his chitin helmet with its polished eyepieces, waited in front with her glaring mother, the gulakhans spreading out from them in a small, armed and armored semicircle.
Shabael Al-Kaushad turned. "Come," he said deeply, the word muffled by his helm, and began striding away up the path without another word. His gulakhans circled up around Maela, Derch and Kanly attempting to hold her arms as though she were a prisoner until her mother glared them off. That glare was ten times more fearsome when turned on her daughter, but Maela did not feel it. She could not. Her people surrounded her, silent, unwilling to show their disapproval, their division, before the villagers, and in silence marched back to their yurts.
She looked back, just once, near the crest of the hill. There was Maissel, a tiny figure standing motionless on the flagstones as the rest of the villagers diffused slowly back to their homes. The distance was great, but Maela's eyesight was keen, and she knew her mer, knew the way he stood, the way he spoke, knew his comfort and his touch and his heart, and knew that that figure, with its hands shoved into the pockets of its trousers – oh, those hands, those beloved hands that would haunt her dreams – its clothes whipping in the wind, its head hunkering low between its narrow shoulders as it stared up at her – that figure was her mer. That figure was hers. And – for a moment – Maela took one last bit of comfort from him, from that certainty. She faced forward, chin held a little higher, ready to face whatever her tribe would throw in her face this time.
And so she did not see the slight figure in blue that stole to the chandler's side. She did not see it take his arm, or touch his cheek softly. And she did not see the chandler hesitate, and then wrap Chana in his arms like clinging to a rock at sea. She did not see his head fall helplessly to Chana's shoulder as the triumphant womer finally flung her arms around his neck. She did not see her aching, betrayed mer betray in turn. Her eyes were on the future, on the trials that awaited her with her own people, the work it would take to make them accept her again. She did not see.
The Zainab were gone by the next morning, taking sulfurous water and their erring daughter, but none of the chandler's other wares; it would be a long, uncomfortable season. For the second year in a row, they departed early in the season, this time making north, and for the second year in a row the scouts of the Ahemmusa, when they came, found no Zainab to raid. For the second year in a row Vos had escaped the annual clash of Ashlanders. It was almost unprecedented, at least in the most recent generation. It was almost… unsettling.
It could not last.