AT NIGHT I LISTEN TO MY DEAD HEART AND NAME IT AFTER A DEAD COUNTRY
THE BIRDS IN MY BLOOD STOP MID-FLIGHT. WHEN I THINK OF YOU, A WAR ENDS.
THE BIRDS IN MY BLOOD STOP MID-FLIGHT. WHEN I THINK OF YOU, A WAR ENDS.
The story is this:
Two enemies meet. Fire, and ice. In another world, Robert Frost writes:
From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour fire—
And Boudika’s heart beats in her chest; her blood becomes an orchestra. Her eyes remain a challenge as everything within her rises to a chorus, a crescendo pitch, a scream, the cry of valkyries.
And Robert Frost goes on to say:
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice
Boudika knows she is too close to his teeth. The proximity of his flesh is unnerving, exhilarating, and his words match the raging rhythm of her heart. A favour of a god… The words take the shape of her obsession. It is a question, inviting response; but hypothetical, rhetorical, and the mare bites her lip and refrains. She would reveal too much, by saying that she would ask, to bring them back.
The thought strikes her with the violence of a blow. Would that mean all of his people too? And staring at him, with the island humidity writhing from his skin in a steaming mist, she cannot help but think of horns cresting the water in moonlight, the swell of many bodies beneath the dark surface, bleached of colour. The whole scene is silver, silver, silver, just like the strange water horse before her. She asks: “What favour would you ask?” And in doing so she is filled with a strange and traitorous hope. But there is something trembling in her voice, and where his had the chipped quality of ice, her’s is the uncertain amble of a flame headlong into oblivion: consuming, consuming, consuming. Even itself.
Were they not both seeking a god for the same reason? Were they not drawn by the same words. A favour, a favour, a favour.
The story is this:
The shapes of two enemies meet. A hairsbreadth separates them. His neck is arched, his words are betrayers in their own right. “I love that even the hare is made divine when the wolf’s teeth close around it’s neck. I love how my body sings of purpose in each stretching sinew on a wild night coursing seals beneath the sickle moon. I love how it is to hunt with my people, in harmony down to our breaths, each knowing the role they must play if we are to fill our bellies before the freeze comes. His voice is music. It is the song of the Khashran, a new time and a new place; it possesses the divine simplicity of the wild. And without even realising it, Boudika is learning toward him; she is looking into his eyes, searching for an answer she knows is there. He is cold. He is ice. But she knows the intimacy of which he speaks—or nearly knows at least.
It reminds her sharply, exquisitely, of what she shared with Vercingtorix. It reminds her of their partnership; the way his body had been a continuation of her body and when the moved, they had always moved together. She guarded his throat when he lunged, and he circled back to protect her flank when she parried. There had been a beautiful intimacy to their work, to their hunt. It reminds her even more sharply—painfully so—of how beautiful they had been, an entire race. How she had scarcely seen anything as beautiful again, and it is the same beauty that Amaroq reminisces. Slightly terrible. Fearsome. The beauty that most are afraid to look at, to accept; because it is life and death, entwined.
The water horse breaks their stalemate. He moves with the rapidity of a viper and as her breath catches and her stomach drops, she thinks: I cannot live without this. His chest is nearly against her shoulder, and she feels the chill of his winter-skin. There is nothing passive about his posture, his arched neck and threatening muzzle—but she is strangely, not afraid. She is exhilarated. There is an arch to her neck, a leaning, an openness; she does not shy from him, she dares him with her eyes, her posture, with the leonine flick of her tail.
I love to know that for another day I am the strongest. Part of her wants to challenge him; it swells and rises within Boudika like the sea at high tide, and within her, too, is a fierce and dangerous pride. Her eyes flash bright garnet. Her eyes are tiger eyes, and the line of her mouth turns hard—until his question unhinges her. Until it takes the earth from beneath her, and she may as well be falling into the deep sea.
And she is left with the proximity of him, a glacier, a glacier with a heartbeat she can nearly echo.
His words are all she has ever known.
But it has never belonged to her; it has only belonged to her, the way a tiger’s pelt belongs to the hunter. The way the hunter spends their whole life watching the thing they kill, knowing it more intimately than they even know theirselves. But… how different does that really make them? I hunted, because its as my nature. And her eyes bore into him, and those words come back to her, again and again: because it is your nature.
So she says them. The thing she has always been afraid to confront; words borrowed from someone whom she had taken everything from. Words borrowed from someone who gave everything back to her. “Because it is my nature.” What else could she say? She could tell him the legends of her people, that hundreds of years ago they had been forced to interbreed with the water horses when they were vikings shipwrecked on Oresziah. She could say, I have more of the water and salt in me, than the rest of them. But it is simpler than that. It is I love the way the ocean sings and I don't know what to become without this, this, this--
It is her turn to play the game of proximity. She turns into his almost-touch, so there is no longer the threat of almost. Her shoulder brushes his chest, and her neck curves until they are nearly cheek-to-cheek. He is taller than her. But, eye-to-eye, she does not think it matters. The bones, the shells, the things he brings with him from the sea—they are singing, singing, singing. Boudika raises her head, presses her lips almost against his ear, and whispers:
“Let me show you… Catch me.”
She lunges away from him, across the stream, and into the jungle. The branches and vines tear at her, and above there is a chorus of mysterious animals, screaming, screeching, taking flight as she thunders past. She reminds herself: this is your element, even with the knowledge that he has to be pursuing, that he too must be running headlong into the darkness after her—
Toward the sea.
She doesn't know what happens next. She doesn't know what happens if--or when--he catches her. It is simply that for a moment, a brief and ephemeral moment, the story is this:
Two heartbeats running through the jungle, toward something they both know is beautiful, and terrible, and everything in between. The ocean is there, somewhere, if they can only run fast enough to reach it. It is the simplicity of one stride, and the next, and striving toward something that is an aching question in a dead night.
But I live to hunt, walker. It is my purpose and my birthright. Why do you?
@Boudika"speaks"
