The weather had apparently been unable to decide between fog and rain, and had opted for a soft in-between drizzle that clung to Zana's fur and robe despite the umbrella Galen had bought her for this expedition. The thing shielded her from the droplets she was shaking from the leaves overhead as she struggled through the underbrush on a steeply upward-sloping path, but it couldn't do anything against the wet leaves slapping her shoulders, or the bramble vines catching her sleeves. The path was so overgrown that Zana had almost missed it - and would thus have missed Ennis and Zatis - and Alan - on their bird-watching trip.
If I'd known about the weather, and their choice of the densest, thorniest thickets for their excursion, I wouldn't have volunteered for this, Zana fumed internally as she untangled her robe from another bramble vine.
Even then, she knew it wasn't true. After Peet had returned the other day, completely devastated from the results of his attempt to revive Alan's memory, she had promised him to take the matter into her own hands. She had played up her professional expertise to a point where failure wasn't even an option anymore, but standing on the rain-soaked path, fighting with both her umbrella and the aggressive vegetation, Zana admitted to herself that she felt as helpless as Peet had been, back in the inn.
"He remembered the words," Peet had muttered. "An' then he jus' flipped." He had stared at the table before him, a picture of misery, all of his usual energy gone.
Zana knew he wasn't fond of being touched - at least not by apes - but she had gone and hugged him anyway. "He was just panicked," she assured him. "Because it did work."
"You don't understand." Peet had shaken his head, not looking at her. "It's not that he can't remember. It's that he doesn't want to."
Peet was taking this too personally, Zana thought as she waded through another patch of tall, wet grass where the path should've been. Even though they both suspected that Alan had suffered through something horrible back in Etissa, Peet's first, instinctive reaction was to feel rejected by his friend.
Zana had tried to explain to him that one couldn't pick and choose what to remember and what to forget; once Alan recognized his former friends, the memory he obviously wanted to keep out of his mind would come back to him, too. On some level, he had to already sense its looming presence and was running away from it, like Zana was running from the shadowy figures of Urko's patrols in her dreams.
But she wasn't sure that Peet had even listened to her. He had nodded, but his face had been unreadable. Peet had his own share of bad memories that he was dragging around with him, and maybe he expected Alan to do the same.
Oh Alan, my poor friend. I wish I could be certain that what we're doing is the right thing.
But Galen had been talking to Zatis, Ennis' mentor, and the old Orangutan had agreed with Zana's assessment - so much that he had scheduled this bird-watching excursion, and had given Galen the date and time, and a map.
"Privat Zatis is more concerned about the consequences of the current arrangement for his young ward than for Alan," Galen had commented when he had handed her the map. "He doesn't share Chief Voltis' conviction that the most urgent thing Ennis needs right now is a pet."
"What does he think Ennis needs most urgently?" Zana asked. She had yet to meet Ennis or Zatis - or Voltis.
"A parent," Galen said dryly. "Zatis will play along with whatever story you come up with. He's not actually hostile to Alan - in fact he thinks having him as a pet would be handy under different circumstances - but he was quite eager to resolve this situation as quickly as possible."
Well, at least they had one ally in Voltis' household, Zana thought as she peered through the underbrush. They needed all the help they could get.
She almost fell over Ennis after the next curve in the path.
The little group of bird-watchers had been so silent - and well-camouflaged in their spotted robes - that Zana didn't have to fake her little shriek of fright and surprise. The young ape jumped up at her gasp, probably as startled as she was, judging by the wide-eyed look he gave her.
"Mothers!" Zana pressed her hand to her heart and stumbled back a step, almost falling over her dropped umbrella.
"What are you doing out here?" The youth scowled at her, his momentary surprise replaced by annoyance.
"I, I..." Zana stammered. "I got lost... I think I took a wrong turn a while ago, when I tried to find a shortcut..."
"Mind your manners, young Ennis." Another heap of green-flecked shadows moved at the side of the path, and morphed into the friendly face of an Orangutan. The ape rose, too, and threw back his hood. "The lady was already frightened enough when she fell over your legs. You should apologize to her for blocking the path."
"Sorry," Ennis mumbled, though his tone implied that it was still her fault, for walking on one of his paths.
"No, it's... I'm fine," Zana said weakly. "You're very well camouflaged." She gestured at the young Chimp's poncho. "I've never seen such a pattern before."
Behind the apes, a third figure had risen and was staring at her with a tense, almost hostile expression. Zana pointedly ignored him; Alan was a human, and she was - for now - pretending she didn't know him. He should be pleased with that - after all, it was exactly what he had been insisting on, ever since he had woken up.
"It's hunting gear," Ennis explained. His slightly dismissive tone, accompanied by an equally dismissive glance at her plain green robe, signaled his thoughts as loudly as if he'd spoken them: City ape, stumbling like a herd of cattle through the underbrush, chasing off everything we could've hunted today.
"Oh," she said, consciously ignoring the youth's scathing assessment of her, "what are you hunting?"
"We were hunting birds," Ennis said pointedly. Behind him, Zatis held up a long tube.
"Ah, but we were only hunting the sight of them," he said with a smile. "No birds were harmed on our hunting expedition."
"What is that?" Zana asked, her curiosity blotting out the actual purpose of her "accidental" encounter for a moment. The apes had wrapped whatever it was in grass, leafy branches, and vines, completely obscuring its sight.
"It's a far-viewer," Zatis beamed. "Do you want to try it?"
"Oh yes, please," Zana said eagerly, and stepped closer.
"You look through this end," Zatis explained, "and you can make the image sharper by moving the tubes against each other, and also by moving this little wheel here, see?"
The viewer was surprisingly heavy - made from metal, Zana guessed, which explained why Ennis and his teacher had camouflaged it with leaves and vines; otherwise, the gleam of light on its edges would've warned the animals away. She lifted the tube to her eye and peered through it.
At first, all she could see were dark, fuzzy shadows. Then Zatis gently steered the tube to the left, and the picture became lighter, if not clearer.
She remembered the Orangutan's instructions about the movable tubes, and started experimenting. The fuzzy edges expanded, contracted, expanded again-
Zana gasped.
Suddenly, she could see a treetop at the other side of the valley - what had been a uniform cover of leaves a moment before was now a single tree. She could see its branches, the leaves gleaming in a single ray of sunlight poking through the low-hanging clouds. A squirrel was moving through the branches, and Zana followed it with the viewer, losing and finding it again, adjusting the tube to keep the animal's contours sharp as it moved away from the tip of the branch and towards the trunk.
It was so close! As if she could just reach out and touch it. Everything was jumping at her eye through the tube, sharp and vivid... she could see the droplets of fog hanging at the edges of the leaves.
She put the viewer down and blinked. The world around her seemed darker and fuzzier somehow, even the expectant face of the Orangutan beside her. "What a... wondrous thing this is," she murmured. "You are very lucky to have it."
"It was a birthday present for young Ennis," the Orangutan said when she handed him the tube back.
"It's a magnificent birthday present," she smiled at the young Chimpanzee, secretly adding a telescope to the typewriter on her wishlist.
Ennis didn't return the smile - whether out of teenage sullenness, or because he suspected her of being yet another adult who was trying to rob him of his human pet, Zana couldn't say.
"Young Ennis was generous enough to leave it mostly to me, since he knows of my unreasonable love for our feathered friends," Zatis said with a tinge of regret in his voice. "Taris here has tried to excite him for the moon and the constellations, but with meager success."
Ennis scuffed his toes against a knob of grass on the path. "He got me excited in his machines, so he mustn't complain," he muttered.
"Taris never complains about his master," Zatis remarked mildly. "He's a very well trained human... for a wildling."
Now Alan was shifting on his feet, too; both Chimpanzee and human seemed to be eager to melt into the underbrush again.
Zana chose her next words carefully; she would have to tread lightly, so as not to startle her prey. "Maybe he's just naturally sweet-tempered? I once had a human who was like that, and he was a wildling, too."
"You don't have him anymore?" Zatis provided her with the next leg of their conversation.
She drew a deep breath, fighting against a sudden surge of grief. "No."
"What happened to him? Did you have to sell him?"
Alan was watching her; she could more feel than see his piercing gaze from the corner of her eyes.
"He just... he drowned," she said, and felt her eyes go wet.
In a way, it was true. And if Alan decided to stay with his new master, it didn't matter if he remembered in his heart who he had once been - to her, he would still be lost, drowned in the wild waters of the river, on that cursed day. Zana hastily wiped her eyes, and smiled tremulously at Zatis. "I'll never forget him. Humans like him are rare. One should cherish them as long as they share one's life."
"As love never dies, neither does the grief for our losses," Zatis said gently. "But sometimes, the Mothers can restore what's lost, and heal us from our sorrow."
"Praise to our Gentle Mothers," Zana said automatically. "My human believed this, too, even though he didn't know the Mothers. He had lost someone he loved dearly, too... a son. But he never gave up looking for a way back to him. He told me he had made a promise..."
By now, Alan was fidgeting, and whispering to the young ape. Zana couldn't make out the words, but she suspected that he was urging his master to break up the meeting and leave. Too bad that while Ennis could command him, he couldn't command the adult apes around him. They would have to stay and listen to what she had to say.
"And it seems he did a lot of things with his son before he had to leave him," she continued, "similar to what you are doing here now, watching birds. My human told me a bit about it... he taught his son how to build cages for fishing... he called them fish traps. They dug around in the earth to find shells and bones from animals of times long past - so long that they had turned to stone. A bit like our archeologists, can you imagine? And apparently, his son loved to hear stories about the stars and the moon..."
She glanced at Alan's face. It was pale and sweaty, his brow furrowed as if he was trying hard to remember that time... all those things he had told her about, at night, while Galen and Peet had already been sleeping. He had distracted her from her nightmares, only to get sad and pensive in return. Zana sighed a little at the memory.
He looked pained now, too - pain from a sudden flash of recollection? Or just one of his tension headaches that Galen had told her about?
I'm so sorry, Alan, but I cannot stop now. Mothers, let this be the right thing to do!
"He was often sad," she added. "He missed his son and his wife very much."
"Why had he left them in the first place, then?" Ennis suddenly broke his silence. He glared at Zana. "If he loved them so much, he should never have gone away!"
"He said he was told to go," Zana said. Alan was looking chastised now, ducking his head. "You know that humans have no choice when they are under orders." She hoped that was true in his world - Alan was already carrying enough unjustified guilt in his heart.
Ennis just scoffed. Zana remembered that his parents had separated. There was no mercy to be expected from the youth here.
She returned her attention to Alan, who was now rubbing his head with clear signs of distress. Zorya had warned her not to apply too much force, so maybe she should back off now. It had been enough for today, and she could always add more details when they would "accidentally" run into each other aga-
"What was the name of the wife?" Zatis suddenly asked, and Zana shot him an alarmed look. This was not a question that would arise naturally from this kind of conversation!
"Maybe I know the name," Zatis amended hastily. "Before I became young Ennis' teacher, I was resident in a number of monasteries, completing my studies... maybe I could help finding her, I have a lot of contacts..."
"Sehli," Zana said quickly, before he could dig that hole any deeper. "Her name was Sehli, but that's moot anyway, now that he's gone."
"Sehli," Zatis mused. "Unusual name. I'm sure I'd have remembered it. And the son?"
Zana glared at him. Of all the Orangutans that she'd had the doubtful pleasure of engaging in small talk with - sometimes for over an atseht, before the damn bugg... the esteemed directors finally got to the point - now she had to meet one who crashed her carefully laid-out trap in his haste to get the human away from his ward!
Couldn't be helped now. She forced a smile on her face. "The son's name was-"
"Chris."
Yes!
Zana closed her eyes for a moment, dizzy with relief. She'd forgive Zatis his rashness, he'd assessed the situation, had assessed Alan correctly, maybe it was true after all and Orangutans were intellectually superior to Chimpanzees...
She opened her eyes again and met Alan's gaze. He was blinking rapidly, looking through her, not at her, looking at whatever memory had arosen in his mind's eye. "The boy's name..." he repeated, slowly, searchingly, "... was Chris. Chris."
"Yes," Zana said softly. "His name is Chris."
He looked at her then, and Zana thought her heart would break at the desolation in his eyes.
"No! NO!"
Everyone stumbled back a step as Ennis jumped into their midst, fists clenched. "You can't have him! He's mine! Mine!" He was in Zana's face all of a sudden, too quickly for her to react. "Everyone thinks they can do what they want, and I don't matter! I never matter! Everyone always takes what I love, and I have nothing! I hate you!"
He pushed her, hard, and Zana tumbled back into the brambles, flailing, falling...
"Ennis!" Zatis grabbed the young Chimp's arm and hauled him back.
"I hate you," Ennis yelled at Zana, shaking off Zatis' hand. "All of you, I hate you! Let me-" He spun around, pushing the old Orangutan away, and jumped off the path.
Crashing sounds of branches breaking, leaves rustling - rapidly retreating, then silence.
Alan had caught Zatis before the Orangutan could fall backwards into the brambles like Zana. He now shook off Alan's hands and stepped forward to help Zana untangle herself from the biting vines that had poked through her sturdy robe as if it was made of nothing but flimsy silks. "I apologize on behalf of my student, Mila. I can honestly say that I've never seen him like this before. Not this badly."
But approximately badly, Zana concluded silently. She let him pull her to her feet and winced a bit at the burning sensation in her back. Galen would have to apply one of his antibiotic ointments later, before the puncture wounds could get infected.
"He seemed very distraught," was all she could think of saying.
"He's got every right to be," Alan said all of a sudden, and Zana blinked at the fury in his voice. "He lost his mother, and now he's afraid he's going to lose me, too!" He didn't move - he was probably aware that Zatis wouldn't be as understanding if he got in her face the way Ennis had a moment before - but Zana still shrunk under his icy glare.
"Why are you so intent on destroying what I have here?" Alan snapped. "I have a good life! A good master-"
"Oh Alan, stop it!" Zana snapped back, unable to keep a sudden flare of annoyance in check. "You only had one master, and it wasn't an ape!"
He blinked at that, taken aback for a moment, and Zana held her breath, waiting for him to make the connection between her words and Peet's delivery...
But he just shook his head, as if he wanted to shake off whatever realization had threatened to creep up on him.
Zana pressed her lips together. Alan's stubbornness was legendary, but Mothers, did he have to insist on using it now to keep up this wilful ignorance? "The father of Chris was also the most loyal man I've ever known," she said. "He never stopped looking for a way home, no matter how hopeless that endeavour seemed, because he had made a promise to his son, and he knew that Chris was just as sad as he was, and because Alan Vere-donne never chose the easy way out."
"Here is a boy who is deeply unhappy," Alan retorted, and flung his arm out to where Ennis had broken through the bushes. "A boy who needs a friend, a boy you just devastated with your insistence that I be the man of your stories!"
"Oh Alan," Zana said sadly, "You're not what he needs, and he's not what you need. You need to go home, Alan, to your own son. To Chris."
"I'm not... I'm not the man of your stories," Alan insisted, tearing at his hair. His headache had to be killing him, Zana thought.
"Then how did you know the name of that man's son?" she asked simply.
He stared at her, wide-eyed, caught in her trap, finally.
She didn't feel triumphant.
"I need to find Ennis," he murmured, and turned away. "He's... he's prone to panic reactions, I need to... to calm him down."
Zana watched him vanish into the underbrush. This time, no sounds charted the movements for her. Only a few trembling branches indicated the spot where he had vanished.
Alan was good at vanishing without a trace, Zana thought sourly.
"Well," Zatis broke the silence after an uncomfortable moment. "We did make some progress with your human, I daresay."
"As long as he so vehemently rejects his old identity, there's no progress to be made," Zana said with a sigh. Peet had been right, she admitted to herself - Alan actively fought against his memories. He didn't want to come back to them.
"Now that the gates have been opened, they cannot be closed anymore," Zatis tried to encourage her. "More memories will surface now, until Taris - no, Alann - can no longer deny his true identity."
"Not to himself," Zana murmured. "But still to everyone else."
Zatis silently folded up the telescope, apparently at a loss for words.
Neither of them spoke as he walked her home.
Laisa cast just one glance at him before she grabbed his wrist and pulled him inside. "Mothers, Taris, what's wrong?"
"My... my head hurts." He let her steer him into her apothecary, where the scents of many herbs - balsamic, bitter, pungent - blended into what he had come to think of as her scent... dark and soothing. "I need something against the pain."
She sat him down on one of the chairs that were pushed against the only, tiny window - dried herbs needed to be protected against the sun, she had explained to him. Right now, Taris was grateful for the soft twilight in the room. He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes.
"What happened?" He heard Laisa walk around the room on soft feet, but no sounds of drawers being pulled open, or jars being put on the counter, lids being opened...
When he opened his eyes again, she was sitting in the other chair, watching him with a worried frown.
"Nothing happened," he said wearily. "Master Ennis and I were in the woods with Master Zatis. We were watching birds with Master Ennis' far-viewer, and I... maybe I overstrained myself, or it was the light from the sun stabbing my eyes... it was already low over the horizon..."
He couldn't bring himself to tell her about that encounter in the woods, about Master Ennis' outrage and how he had stumbled through the undergrowth after the young ape, trying to catch up with him and calm him down...
It hadn't been difficult to follow Master Ennis' tracks, which led straight back to Chubla, but when Taris had finally arrived at Chief Voltis' mansion, his young master had barricaded himself in his room and refused to come out, or to answer to Taris' attempts to get him to open the door and at least let him in.
He had given up when his voice had gotten hoarse and his headache unbearable. His medicine was in Master Ennis' room, but for some reason, Taris hadn't thought of asking his master to at least hand him the tea canister through the door; he had only thought of coming here, to this dark and peaceful room, and Laisa's gentle hands.
"I must've overstrained myself," he repeated. "All that walking up and down the mountain sides."
Or maybe it had been the flashes of an image in his mind - a boy, a human boy with sandy hair and freckles, and a broad smile... the way he had looked up at him...
The memory of that face sent another stab through his skull, and through his heart, and he vigorously rubbed his temples.
"You're clenching your jaw," Laisa observed. "That will make the headache worse. Turn around."
Taris obediently shifted in his seat, and she rose to stand behind him. He let out a surprised - and pain-filled - groan when she began to massage his neck.
"You're so tense, it's no wonder your headache flared up," Laisa remarked. "What put you so on edge?"
Noth-
It was already at the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't say the word. She wouldn't believe him that nothing had happened on that hike, that all his muscles had cramped up 'just because'. He had to give her an explanation... one that wouldn't have her probe into his mind like that Chimpanzee woman in the woods had done.
"That man came to visit me again yesterday. Dr. Kova's orderly."
"Dehni?"
He didn't know that name. Taris was pretty sure that he really didn't know the name, even if the face wearing it was eerily familiar. "He said he had something he wanted to give me."
That strange verse. It didn't sound like one of the verses from the Scrolls - by now, Taris had heard a lot of them, since Zatis insisted that Master Ennis memorize them all - but it somehow reminded him of them. Something about the rhythm, maybe. What was more unsettling, though, was that the lines were stuck in his head now, repeating themselves over and over and over again. He had caught himself muttering them under his breath several times today. Taris hoped his master hadn't caught him muttering to himself, too. If his master's guardians thought he was losing his mind, they would take him away and...
He had no idea what would happen then. Better not to find out.
Laisa's hands were still kneading his neck and shoulders, a gentle, rolling motion that soothed his nerves despite the storm raging inside his head.
"Did you like it?" She didn't ask what 'Dehni' had given him.
"It was just... just gibberish. He's harassing me."
"You're tensing up again, Taris. Try to relax. Nothing is going to happen to you here."
It was nonsense, gibberish, yes, just gibberish... but why did he understand the words? That verse was in a language no ape had ever spoken, nor any human from here to the Southern Sea, so why could he understand it perfectly?
Why did he know the lines that Dehni, or whatever his real name was, hadn't said?
... lead us not into temptation... deliver us from evil...
It was the last line that got to him, every time. Taris jumped up from his seat, unable to sit still any longer. His heart was racing in his chest, and the room seemed to be too small all of a sudden, the walls leaning in, suffocating him.
"Taris." Laisa was still standing behind his chair, hands resting lightly on the edge of the seatback. "What's haunting you?"
"I remember a boy," he blurted out, then turned away abruptly, cursing his lack of self-control. Why couldn't he keep his mouth shut around her? Why couldn't he guard his secrets against her?
"And that memory frightens you?"
He exhaled heavily, still frustrated with himself. "No. It... it just makes my head hurt. I don't know why." Well, he knew why - Laisa had told him often enough: he tensed up whenever a memory surfaced, and that tension caused the headache. It was all quite simple and logical.
She didn't point it out to him now. Instead, she stepped into his path, forcing him to stop his frantic pacing. "You're fighting a losing battle, Taris. Those memories are reasserting themselves, whether you like it or not." She laid her hands on his chest, a light touch that still made him tremble. "Your body is healing from its injuries, and your mind wants to follow."
"I like my new life," he said desperately. He leaned into her touch, putting his arms around her. "I like you," and Mothers, he felt like a boy again at that confession, all awkward and gangly and jittery.
She smiled up at him. "I like you, too."
He had probably forgotten how to breathe for a moment, because he suddenly had to suck in air like a drowning man, so much air that it broke out of him again as laughter. "I, I... actually I more than just like you..."
Her smile became mischievous now, and he watched, fascinated, as dimples suddenly appeared in her cheeks while it deepened. "I actually more than just like you, too," she said, eyes glittering with laughter... or something else.
"... really?"
The laughter slipped away and was replaced by something deeper. Softer. "Really."
He leaned closer, drawn to the promise he saw in her gaze now; he wanted to be caught in that soft darkness, cradled in those quiet waters...
Her lips were warm and welcoming, and as she draped her arms around his neck to draw him closer, he let his eyes droop shut and let her carry him along, into her embrace, into the deeper shadows of her mouth, into the scent of moss and rain and mountain winds. He kissed her, and kissed her, and the torrent of memories and thought retreated until it was only a soft murmur at the edge of his mind.
"I shouldn't..." Laisa whispered against his lips when they both had to surface for air. "But every time I see you, my heart jumps and I want to... just touch you... but not like I should, not like a healer should..."
Taris caught her in another kiss, and let his hands glide down her back and under the hem of her blouse, touching hot skin like he shouldn't, but all the memories were gone now, drowned out by the smooth warmth under his palms, by her scent, by her kiss.
"How do you wanna touch me?" he murmured some time later, but she didn't say, just stepped back, and back, her arms still around his neck so that he had to follow her - out of the herb room and through another door into a small chamber that held nothing more than a nightstand and a bed. A bed.
She turned around her own axis so that his back was to the bed, and pushed against him, and he tumbled backwards onto the mattress. The woman loomed over him, laughing, her teeth gleaming white in the twilight, and her hands were on his chest, on his belly, reaching into his pants, "I'll show you how..."
Panic slammed into him, and disgust, and the absolute certainty that he couldn't do anything to stop her, that he was tied down and poisoned and disgraced, just a thing to be used in Ramor's stable...
Ramor.
With a strangled cry, Alan Virdon remembered.
