XVIII: The Gift

I found myself wandering the halls - being driven mad by all the quiet thoughts of my own mind - when I stumbled upon Nibal in the hall. He held a thick cigar between his lips. He'd stepped toward the main castle gates without notice of me.

His appearance in the castle took me by surprise. I stumbled after him to say hello.

He raised his brows, as if in as much surprise, as I tripped down a few stairs to approach. "The lady witch." He bowed his head. "Ahlan wa sahlan."

I murmured the words back. The language was a struggle to replicate. Their throats made sounds quite different from common tongue and the Harkonnen language. My pronunciation was atrocious compared to his native fluidity.

"Fine day," he commented.

I nodded. "Yes. It was." He did not pursue more topics after that. He only stood with question. I felt silly chasing after him as I did. "Surprised to see you here. The na-Baron is off duty. He's hosted a personal party."

He gestured toward the large doors behind my shoulder. "I know. The na-Baron was kind enough to deliver me an invitation to his table."

"Oh."

Feyd did not behave as though he liked the brothers. He held a sharp tension in his jaw when either man was near.

"Is Harun here? How does he like the party?"

Nabil looked at the tips of his shoes. "My brother was not given invitation. I was told to come alone."

My stomach clenched.

"You are very busy men. The na-Baron must not want to cripple your business by requesting both of you to his table."

Nabil gave a stiff smile. As if he knew better too and knew that I knew it too.

"Yes, Lady. That is it."

It became very awkward. I did not know more of what to say to him.

My face froze in place to feign a sense of comfort as I wished him a good night. It slipped as I turned my back away.

Once again, I ran back to my chambers to find a comfort in a silence that no longer felt whole, but lonely. My thoughts were an enemy. Belief that my general like of the brothers had led to Feyd's obvious dislike of them. And all that Feyd bestowed me in favor stole from the others around me.

I was a burden. A burden to the world, to the limited resources of the planet, to the staff that walked on hot coals to care for me without repercussions, and all else whom had the bad luck of striking my interest.

Vishti walked into the room and noticed my distant stare out the darkened glass windows. They gave a sad smile.

"Your face. It breaks my heart to see it so sad." Their hands ran along the outsides of my cheeks. "How can a lady like you wear a face like it so often?"

I sighed a large exhale. Where to begin?

"I am a disease here, Vishti."

Their eyebrows rose as they plucked wrinkles in the bedspread.

"Every bit that goes into my mouth steals from another," I explained. "I do not want to cause others pain, but I cannot stop it. It is out of my control."

"Life is not a thing we control."

"Some days I think ending it all would free, maybe, a few poor souls from a death of starvation or thirst. Spare some people their deaths. If I weren't here."

"Hush, now. My lady. Those are not your true feelings." Vishti now tapped the top of my head. They petted my hair stroking it gently with a care they never showed when it came to combing through it.

I looked up. My arms loosened the hold around my legs, with my knees easing away from my chest. "It isn't?"

"No. It is just the time of the moons. Bodies fool into thinking they are sad and miserable. Your hormones will balance. Let me fetch you a pill."

I frowned. "That is not it, Vishti."

"The feelings pass near na-Baron, yes?"

He was much too overpowering for any emotion to be noticeable. His need to be the center of attention took priority over my guilt for being alive.

"Only because he makes me forget."

"We all deal with these thoughts, my lady. The curse of living. Some are never free of it. They do not find the distractions important enough."

"Distractions?"

"Love. Friends. Children."

All those things were things I did not have.

My hand raised to my lips to hold them closed. It was a sudden response. I did not understand its power, only that I had to fight it with every ounce of my being.

Water trickled through my fingers down to my palms.

Crying. I was crying? What were these tears coming out of my eyes. Why did they not burn through my skin?

Vishti took pity on me. They gathered me up into an embrace against themselves.

I let myself fall into the embrace, comforted by it. My arms wrapped around their midsection. I burrowed my face against their stomach as my tears stained the dress skirts.

They stood over me, patting my shoulder.

"I'm the only one left." I shuddered. "None of them survived. I think, I think I'm alone."

"There is more to come, my lady. You will not be alone."

Vishti left me to get ready for bed alone. I needed the space.

Despite the thoughts in my head.

I indulged in a bubble bath. My body was slathered in oil at my own hands. My braids were wrapped behind my head to keep them free of my neck. In recent days, my hair was hot. My body sweated, profusely. Every inch of me was boiling at a degree it never reached before.

When I emerged from the bathing room, a stack of tapes was sat on the table along with a small projection device. There were writings on the spines of the tapes that I could not read easily. Some names, I believed, with a time length.

Vishti was the only one who had access to my chambers at this hour. Only they could enter through the locks without knocking and being allowed entrance.

I trusted the tapes enough to know that they were worth a try.

My fingers slipped one heavy tape into the device. It whirred alive.

Music filled the air through the mechanical groaning of the old technology. A projection - like an old version of a hologram - shimmered above the small device. It showed a dance floor. Music played from somewhere off screen.

The start of the music signaled the start of the motion. Bodies moved in an exact rhythm. A dance!

I stared at the projection as an entire dance was played through. It repeated over and over, as long as I played it.

Aishti must have told Vishti about her plans in the morning. Why else would these be delivered to my room? Feyd did not show an enjoyment of dancing. He never did.

Perhaps I would have to dance with another noble. Ugh. I disliked the idea of touching another person, yet alone allowing myself to be turned and twisted on a dance floor as these dances showed.

Yet, I knew that noble women did dances. It was not done with their admirers or people they liked. It was to be hospitable. I'd heard some ladies complain when they visited the Baron's castle about such instances. An unlikeable dance partner was not turned away. It was an obligation, a duty to please the aristocracy.

The dances were less embarrassing to learn without Aishti there. If I did something stupid, there was no witness to it.

I moved the heavy projector into the bathing room to utilize the mirrors for my advantage. They showed what my body did - as I thought I commanded it.

How I managed to dance for the na-Baron and the castle on my first night was a miracle I would never comprehend. My body was incapable of repeating a motion without looking flaccid and uncoordinated.

It took me an hour to memorize one dance, enough to be satisfied I would not embarrass myself when Aishti came in the morning. An hour of reminding my muscles who was in charge. They repaid me by being tender and achy.

The bed of the queen quarters was a strange embrace since Feyd kept me locked within his chambers for his delight in a permanent placement. I had not slept in the bed for ages. Still, I found rest easy. The heat gave me little reason to toss restlessly. I slept without abandon on Arrakis. Something about the planet had comforted me, pulled me to safety, made it irresistible to sink into depths of darkness.

A sudden jolt broke through the room. The doors were kicked open from the corridor.

"Sweetness," Feyd pronounced with a very nasty slur. "I'm home."

I rose from the blankets, blinking.

The chambers were dim lit. Only shadows played through my mind as I squinted through the dark to find hint of him.

He staggered through the threshold. A bottle of wine, within his palm.

The thought of the kitchens, and how fast the bottles were drank, popped a question into my head: what number bottle was that?

"Did you have fun?" I asked.

His lips curled with a missing component to them: menace. He slipped his feet from his unlaced boots and kicked them off. His body fell against the bed frame. The mattress rippled under his weight. I was thrown back against the headboard.

The smell hit my nose like a sudden smack.

"You're smashed," I observed in a tone of disbelief.

All these years, I had not seen him so drunk.

Feyd lifted his hand and showed a bottle of wine. "Cheers to that."

He tried to sip from the mouth, but the cork kept it contained. In his state, he did not notice. He grumbled about it being empty. "They gave me an empty one," he muttered. "Bastards."

It was rolled away to the foot of the mattress. I prayed it wouldn't be smashed there.

Feyd crawled toward me. He snuggled his face against mine and placed a forceful kiss against my mouth.

The fumes of his breath were like fuel!

"My lady," he slurred. "I still cannot believe you are mine."

I pushed his chest away gently. The fumes stung my eyes. How much was it possible to consume without dying? He was sure to have passed the limit by now.

"Well I am," I replied. "You need rest, Feyd. You are so drunk."

He did not fight as I pulled the shirt from his person. In fact, he rather enjoyed it. He looked down at me with a growing smirk. "You just want me naked."

It made me laugh. "You are far too easy to get naked, my na-Baron. I needn't breathe for you to slip off your pants."

His tongue stuck between his teeth as he smiled, half amused and half lost to his drunk delirium. It pulled a half smile from me, even in my sleepy state.

The bandages wrapped around his body were dark against his wound.

I frowned. "When was the last time this was changed? It is bled through."

He shrugged. "It does not hurt." His head tilted back at the ceiling. The motions of his body swayed as if he stood in a gentle wind.

Not hurt did not mean healed.

The monster cared not to heal itself from all its own destruction. Part of it resonated with me. I respected his choice to destroy himself through what means brought him internal peace - a state he did not know. Still, I ached when I saw his body cut and split, weeping its life's water without care.

On a planet where water meant everything - life and death - it should not be disregarded in that manner. Others were slain for theirs. Some, so thirsty and driven mad by heat, drank the water of another body to sustain themselves.

A Harkonnen like himself should know that. Intimately. They dined on each other if the circumstance was right. Their bodies should be guarded fiercely with such knowledge.

But I knew. As my fingers trailed along his wounded side, deep down, Feyd was no Harkonnen. He was a victim of their own appetites for self-destruction. The Baron's own making.

Feyd-Rautha was a boy once. A boy of promise, no doubt, with how precise his mind worked.

Had the Baron resisted his Harkonnen nature, Feyd could have elevated their house from the depths of depravity.

Only.

The selfish delights they never denied themselves created the monster before me.

He was not their savior. He was their damnation.

A creature of whom I now took pity.

"Lay down, Feyd. I'll take care of you."

No one else would. Not under pain of death.

And he was in no state to kill anyone.

"You know, you know what I want," he rambled on as I fetched some strips of linen gauze that were intended as rags for monthlies. His body stretched flat on the mattress. "On my death bed. As I die I want you-." An excited groan left his lips as I pulled the old bandages off his injury. It ripped the slight scab that had healed against his old bandage. I resisted the urge to scowl at his excitement. "I want you to stick a knife in my belly. Right here. I want to watch you fuck the hilt as I die."

The admission stopped my work. The idea stunned me so deeply that I had no reply that even measured the shock I felt at a request.

He rose to sitting as I wrapped the linens around his back. Without complaint or comment, an achievement in his state.

His eyes followed my fingers as I laid the gauze flat against his side. I used small tight knots to secure it in place. My fingers tapped to see if more blood soaked through, but none did.

"I missed you tonight," he blurted.

My face heated. In all honesty, I missed him, too.

Vishti was right. He distracted from the pain. He chased out my worst nightmares by being right there, at my side, never letting me have a moment's peace to realize them.

"I missed you, too," I admitted.

Fingertips ghosted along my cheekbones. I lost my breath.

Feyd again kissed me. This time, I did not feel assaulted by wine. It tasted sweet, tangy.

"You taste delicious," he murmured. "Like a fine wine."

"That's you."

"Is that right?" His lips loudly smacked together.

I rolled my eyes. "Get to sleep, na-Baron. You have Witan. Bright and early."

We settled into the bed, knowing escorting him to his own chambers was out of the question. I was too small to support his massive body that far. The nature of his knees was bendy. We'd not make it out of my own chambers.

Feyd snuggled against me. The erection in his pants pressed against my thigh, although it was not the same way as he did when he wanted me to notice it.

"I love you," released on a sigh as he sank against the pillow and was the last noise he made before it stilled to the silence of slumber.

A sheet of ice coated me. I laid frozen, numb with shards of frost inching deeper into my chest.

For once, Feyd slept soundly. He did not awaken at every motion of me tossing and turning in the bed. I managed to even rise before him, leaving him alone in my bed, before I padded to the bathing room to relieve myself in the pleading hope he would not enter - unannounced - and see it.

I'd convinced myself to be unbothered by Feyd's words. Drunken outbursts were not to be trusted. Anything could be said with the bubbly touch of alcohol through the mind.

My chambers were split with large pockets doors to section the space. Mine were kept slid inside because I liked the view of all my space for me to see. This morning, with Feyd finally sleeping without interruption, I decided the sections might be useful. I could use my space for my morning routine without worry of him awaking.

The control panel on the wall slid the large pocket doors closed. They were oversized panels that slid from the smallest crack in the walls. Together they joined in their center to form a beautiful partition.

I'd only settled into my soft cashmere robe when a knock hit against my door. My feet jumped.

Aishti must have come for the dance lesson.

My mouth was ready to explain it all away out in the hall, but it was not Aishti who greeted me at the door. It was Adnan.

He kept his head bowed but I knew by the hair contained below his leather hood that it was him.

"A gift for the lady," he said.

A gift. For me?

Adnan carried the largest bowl of pure pastel blue. Inside were the plump bodies of rambutans.

My mouth instantly watered. I couldn't hold in my smile. "From whom?"

"The na-Baron, my lady. Good and divine leader, my lord the na-Baron."

I glanced over my shoulder. The pocket doors remained intact.

"But, he sleeps," I replied.

"He tells me last night, have it delivered to my lady's chambers in the morning. I deliver it," Adnan said.

I despised the way he refused to meet my gaze. My skin tensed and slithered.

My head bowed allowance his entrance. I stood aside to allow Adnan inside to deliver the bowl of breakfast - which Vishti could have done on their way in - when he was promptly followed by four more men. All carried large bowls filled with fruit. Ceramic pitchers, too, were placed on the stone table. It was round and small, not meant for more than four people, and was soon crowded from the gifts.

There had to be some mistake. It was excessive. Feyd knew that the prospect of eating all that was impossible for a single meal. I even told Adnan so.

His response was only that it was what na-Baron ordered.

The servant itched for a reason to leave. I gave it to him.

I closed the door quickly behind the exit.

My fingers danced along the bowls. They were hand crafted. The ridges were not from factories. The subtle shifts told me that some person took the time to craft every layer.

Of course there was the bounty I was given as my gift. The rambutans were not the only precious ones. Citrus fruit, the same one I'd fed Musa, swelled the top of a large bowl.

Hunger battled out my first instinct to be sorrowful over the display; it wanted to consume these in great number.

Hand-sized yellow mangos were ripened to perfection. Their scent was subtle, sweet, delicious.

Seeing as the order was given by Feyd, no knives accompanied the breakfast display. The forks and spoons did not peel without massacring the fruit - I tried.

I grabbed the bowl and slipped back inside the bedroom. His pants were dropped off the edge of the bed. There was no chance a blade did not hide in their pockets. Somewhere.

A small dagger slipped against the mango skin. I peeled each of their bodies while I was there. It took time. The juices coated my hands. My grip slipped at times as I made passes around the fruit.

Feyd slept still. Peacefully.

It gave me a chance to observe him without repercussion. The way he appeared so human-like in that vulnerable state.

Last night he had not hesitated to find me, even in his drunken state. Once a prisoner, I was. I could have skewered him with his own blades and ruined the Baron's succession line. He tripped over his own feet to get into bed. My chances would have been fairer than normal.

Feyd was nothing if he was not calculated.

He trusted me not to kill him.

And I had not. I had not even considered it.

Of course, my mind then replayed his words in my mind. "I love you". Would have those words slipped from his mouth if they were not true? Feyd spun many tales to fit his schemes. I witnessed the well wound lies he told at court, to nobles, at times his advisors. But if there was no need, he did not fear the truth. He embraced truths head on.

My throat bobbed. I knew in my heart that he meant it. Those words.

Love.

All this time, he was looking for love in me.

And how had I repaid him? Not killing him was not a big gesture. It was a common decency.

I sliced a small piece of yellow fruit from the pit. It was slippery, juicy. The sweetness would be good for him.

My hands placed the small slip of fruit onto his bottom lip. The tip of the fruit just caressed the tip of his tongue.

His face scrunched, confused.

I silently chuckled at his expression.

That is what he opened his eyes to: my smiling face.

"Good morning," I told him. "You'll want to eat that. It will make your mouth taste better. I imagine it's pretty rancid from all that wine last night."

The fruit slipped between his lips.

I reached over and grasped another piece. "Here."

He ate the next piece. "What's that for now?"

"Because you will eat what I give you. And these mangoes are too good not to share."

Feyd raised to his elbows. His eyes squinted at the light. Scowl cut deep through his pale flesh.

I dashed over to strengthen the shade of the windows. "Sorry. Your head has to be pounding by now."

The stoic quiet was not like him. Nor was the narrowing of his eyes.

"It does."

"I think I have some relievers somewhere. Let me grab them."

Vishti kept a small basket stocked with rags for monthlies and pain reliever tablets. It was easy enough to find. I grabbed him a couple before I poured him a cup of juice.

"Here." I handed them over. "Does your stomach bother you? I can grab you an apple if you want."

He flashed a cautious glance around the room. "What is going on, Mintha?"

"I thought you would not feel well this morning -."

"You are never this cheerful in the morning. What time is it? Is it midday yet?"

"No." I snorted. "It is only mid-morning." My body shifted. I felt my face fall. "I am not grumpy."

Feyd's eyes jumped around as if he was still unsure. "You are not a delight when you are awoken early."

"I suppose that's true…" I was awoken for his meetings and duties, as his shadow that went everywhere with him, and it was not an exciting time for me. "Maybe it was your gift that has cheered me so."

Feyd tilted his head curiosity.

I gestured to the mangoes. "You had ten pounds of fruit delivered to my chambers this morning. Don't you remember?"

He shook his head, running his palms down his face. "Details are blurry."

"I figured as much. You were unstable on your feet by the time you kicked in the door."

He looked down at himself. His eyes noticed the fresh gauze wrapped tight around his waist. The question in his face pulled at my heart.

All the ways he took care of me, and a single act of compassion confused him.

"I noticed your dressings needed changed. So, I did that before I put you to bed," I explained. "They need to be changed more frequently. Unless you want to fall ill. I'll rewrap them after you bathe. It should be good for a while."

I left to let Feyd gain his bearings. The hangover, I imagine, was strong. He was confused and quieter than normal.

My fingers set to work peeling some fruit. It kept me busy, peeling and eating, as he readied himself.

Feyd opened the pocket doors of the bed room when he was done. He'd thrown on his trousers but neglected to clothe his top half. It still glistened with moisture.

The white roll was on the table near the fruit. I grabbed it.

He stood still as I wound the wound dressing around him.

"This gift I sent. It pleased you?" He asked.

I looked up at his face, unafraid of what showed through my expression. "Yes."

"What was it?"

"Like I said. Ten pounds of breakfast." My arm gestured around the sitting room. "I've eaten too much of it already."

"That's it? That is what it takes for you to be so happy?"

I swallowed. "Of course. What else could there be?"

The haunted words that I'll remember so lovingly said from his mouth until my dying days.

I love you.