Morning found an old man still sleeping, though he woke to hands at his shoulders, hauling him upright as another crouched in front of him. He winced dazedly as the first caught bruises under his fingers, and drowsily tried to recognize both their faces and his surroundings. He could not remember where he was, nor how he’d gotten here, or why they-Ah, yes.
Not the market then. And Fiira… Fiira was gone.
These hands, holding him stiffly, pressing a cup of tepid water to his lips, they were a stranger’s hands, with a stranger’s understanding. They did not know.
“I am sorry. Most sorry. I did no-”
“Save your breath, old man. It’s done. Regrets win you nothing.” The one who cut him off, sharp and angry, had a toad’s gold mottled eyes and wide, horizontal pupils, but it was the claws pressing through the fabric of his tunic that made him stop. They were jinn, whose lives he had brought trouble into by believing for even a moment that he could do what she’d asked of him. And now he was dreaming of second chances when he should instead be accepting his fate. Dreaming of mourning cloth and dangerous promises and miss-missing her who had given him purpose.
“Yes. She is gone. I was… dreaming…” His tears spilled over again, and his hitched breath made the first hesitate for a moment, but the pair feeding him breakfast did not question him, and kept their expressions closed against whatever pity or anger they might have felt. But though he knew those same detached methods, he could not stop. Curdle mourned the friend he’d made and never known as fingers pressed dry bread to his lips and merely brought the cup back without arguing when he turned away. He could not eat. He would have refused the water as well, but in that, they insisted.
He was still crying when they gathered the food and moved away. He did not turn to watch them leave, and they said nothing more before closing the door. They should not have said even as little as they had: prisoners were not meant for conversation. In Sherahd, it would have placed them under suspicion. He did not expect to see either again.
He should have known better. But the memory of being in the market was so vivid, he’d forgotten himself when reality swallowed dreams whole. Of course, it could not have been real. No dream ever was, but the memory stayed strong in his mind, refusing to leave, so that hope and resignation remained at war within him, well into the afternoon. He could not convince himself that wishful thinking would never be. A dream, no matter how real it seemed or what hope it offered, was still nothing more than a dream.
Even if it was more, when would he have had the chance to hold that cloth, let alone hang it beneath the sky? He’d told that woman he would come to her if she would keep the urn. It had been a promise made out of desperation, but impossible, he thought, to realise. It was a fool who still believed in the impossible, at his age. And twice, now, he’d done it for the sake of a woman who might well have been insulted by his attempts.
No, he’d failed Fiira, and himself, and, if the dream was real, he had failed the weaver, Miria messi. Why add to the weight he already carried?
Curdle had given it up, only just, only barely convincing himself, when, with his eyes shut and his back supported by the nearest wall, he realised the exhaustion he’d felt upon waking was diminished rather than grown. There was an itch at the base of his skull that he recognized, but did not immediately understand. He might have explained the exhaustion as an old man sleeping poorly on a rough floor. But he’d been so deeply asleep when they stirred him awake that there was no other indication of it being poor. And the itch, irritating though it could grow to become, was too much coincidence to ignore. Combined, they indicated a loss of magic through heavy use. The trouble then, was that he could not remember doing any such working.
His attempt to shift into a bird had failed. Miserably. A half day and full night’s sleep would have easily allowed him to regain his energy. So… Where had it gone?
The answer, foolishly, annoyingly after so much effort to deny it, drifted back to the impossible. Dreaming, but… not. Had he truly ridden the winds to slip into that weaver’s dreams? Could it not simply be an ache brought on by his restraints?
Rationally, he should have accepted that as the most logical. The least likely to bring disappointment in the end. But he could not deny the hope a second time. With a chance at possible, it would not be silenced.
He spent the rest of that day with wet cheeks, though the tears were from disbelief then. And when the jinn returned in the evening, he managed a few bites of the bread, dry though it had grown during the day. He did not try to refuse the water again. That time, he took his meal in silence. The cat clawed man had another partner, and he understood the subtle warning, whether or not it was meant. Words were an unnecessary luxury.
That evening, he fell asleep hopeful, and woke halfway through the night, disappointed. Cursing himself for a fool as he shivered through the lifting shadows and tried to remember what he’d done that first time. It was confusing to hope for something he did not know how to believe in. Magic he did not know was not impossible, there were many things he did not know, but how could he use it if he didn’t know it? And how could he make that memory leave him alone if it was only a dream? He did not know.
He did not understand it, either.
Could not explain it even to his own mind, which had witnessed the entire thing. It had been a long time since a young, horn-nubbed child grinned up at his parents and, without prompting, reached out to the fire to have it curl against his fingers as he might a stray cat.
The condition that had allowed his tired mind to escape its bonds, however, had never changed, and there came a short moment nearer the morning when he found himself drifting again outside his body, unfeeling arms turned to wings or wind or simply lightening the load. His own yearning doing the rest. That time, he did not think it a dream though, and his sudden fear that he’d truly lost his arms, or might never come back to earth, connected him very solidly to his body, dragging him down. Curdle spent the rest of the night shaken by the experience, knowing he had been awake both before and after it started. Aware of his surroundings, seeing how his perception of them shifted as his mind drifted sideways into a light like magic when everything should have been in shadows his eyes could not pierce.
For a short, disconcerting second, he had seen himself leaning limp against the wall as he plummeted into his body. He had been… outside himself. That, he could say with certainty, had never happened before. And he could not remember ever hearing of anyone else to whom it had happened either. It was a frightening, exciting, dangerous thing he felt, as his breath quickened with the realisation that he had discovered a magic he did not know existed. Perhaps no one else knew it either, though the desert was a large area to cover in complete ignorance. Maybe it was only unknown in the northeast.
Suddenly, Curdle found himself sitting upright, struggling to stand, needing to move as he processed this strange notion. Light was creeping in through the windows, a pale flush against the opposite wall as he grunted in annoyance and tried to brace himself on an arm that wasn’t-…It wasn’t there! Neither was the other! Panic forced the issue, helping him surge to his feet despite the stiffness of ill-used joints. That had only been a dream! Surely! He could still feel them at his back, the weight, at least, pulling at his shoulders, but he could not feel anything beyond that, and as they were tied behind his back, he could not see much more. His horns did not help matters.
With so much strangeness already invading his world, and a night of little sleep besides, it was perhaps forgivable that when the jinn arrived that morning, he could not help but break the silence, begging them to tell him if his arms had been lost. It was even less surprising when they only managed to stare at him in confusion, the one holding his breakfast, and the other a blindfold in preparation of a visit, likely, from their superiors. They recovered quickly, the first shaking his head with a frown, the other turning him to check the knots binding his hands. Whether they thought he was trying to escape or not, the sharp hiss of breath released in surprise had him expecting the worst. The rough rasp of metal on leather left him stiff with tension, but the only repercussion of the drawn blade was an unexpected weight swinging forward and an ache stretching across his shoulders, settling deep in the bones as he stared at the revealed hands.
If they were his, and they must be, for they were attached to the arms now hanging at his sides and as unresponsive as they’d been before, then they were ghastly. Swollen and dark from the wrist down. He couldn’t move them. And when he looked up, the little room was ringed with guards, all waiting for him to take the opportunity an unthinking kindness had given him. They thought he would run. He should have. But all Curdle could think of just then was how heavy he felt. Without fully comprehending the danger to himself, he simply dropped his gaze again, staring first at one hand and then the other, willing the fingers to move, close, lift, anything, even a small twitch would do.
Then he stopped thinking as sensation crept through nerves awakening around muscles and joints too quickly freed from their unnatural position. Even a younger man would have found two days and nights with their arms bent back difficult to recover from. Unable to set a hand against the hurt, as both were currently useless, Curdle could only curl in on himself, immediately covered in sweat and sinking slowly towards the ground. Two guards, not the men who’d freed him, they were currently restrained on the floor amidst the remains of his breakfast, stepped forward to support him, and, realising the situation, helped work his joints while he hissed at the ants trailing bites down his arms and under his skin. One set to work on his hands, a waste of magic, but he was not going to ask him to stop.
They took the opportunity to cover his eyes. And then a calm voice set to demanding answers, demanding the Lady Gerun’s whereabouts, of herself or her body. They wanted confirmation of her death, of her disappearance. Wanted to know what he had done, where he had put her. How he had done it. No one bothered to ask why. Or if. He had run, that was all the proof they needed. Motive was assumed obvious. Jinn were dangerous, jealous creatures.
Swaying where he stood, Curdle could only shake his head to every question, closing his eyes against the pain, the guilt, and his involuntary blindness. He had not killed her, but he was certain they would not take the cremation of a noble lightly. It did not matter what he told them, and words could not be pushed past the constriction of his throat anyway. He couldn’t concentrate. From a night of quiet stillness to everything at once, it was too much to handle. So, he simply didn’t. For every question, their only answer was the same slow, consistent shake of his head.
Eventually, the voice went away and he wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there shaking his head and whimpering through the rejuvenation of his limbs without questions to refute. Perhaps it had only been half a second before they caught his head to still it and untied the blindfold. Perhaps it had been an hour. All he knew was the relief of seeing his cell empty again. Well, mostly. This time, when he looked down, his hands, though they remained numb to his efforts to move them, had regained a more healthy pallor, the swelling having lessened. They were closer, as well, having been bound together in front and attached to a cord he’d not even noticed being tied around his neck. Whoever had tied the knots this time had done so with far greater kindness. They did not cut off his circulation anymore, and there was enough slack that he could roll his shoulders and straighten his elbows a little. Still uncomfortable, and now he could see the hair twined in with the cord, but it removed the risk of damaging him further, as he was not their property, even if he was accused of murder.
After giving him some water, the pair who had remained to work his joints left him alone, and Curdle was caught in the quiet and lingering ache that filled more than his bones now. Caught with too much on his mind. Too much to face.
Between realizing it was no dream, that promise and second chance, and the painful interrogation, the tears had returned. The hurt not solely physical. He had lost her. Lost hope. Lost himself. Only to find it all again in a dream. It would not make the Lady Gerun live again, but if he told them now where she was, on a cart bound for Sherahd, it would betray Miria, and break another promise. If she would keep it… if she would hold Fiira’s ashes for him, he could not break that promise. He could not break.
Leaning against the wall, just barely supporting himself against it, the old jinni let his head droop, eyes falling again to the swollen fingers he could feel now, burning like coals but motionless, and slowly, inexorably, felt his strength fading as he slid towards the floor. His hands, he knew they would fix, as well as they were able. But though he was sure they’d not meant the damage, Curdle had been on the other side of where he was now enough to know the methods they would use. Now that someone of authority was there to oversee each interrogation, there would be no more small kindnesses.
And he could only laugh. The sound emerging raspy and breathless. If they had only come a day sooner, they might have won some small piece from him, with nothing to lose, when he knew nothing. But now… Now he did know what they wanted, and he could not say, because Miria messi had given her word that they would see this through. They would keep the Lady Fiira out of the dark.
For a time, he stayed like that, gasping out a sickly laugh while tears retraced worn paths into his beard. Eventually, however, he fell asleep, and found peace, though it couldn’t last. They came again with his dinner, releasing his arms and blindfolding him again, and that same voice began repeating itself as he continued his own, tight-lipped ritual of shaking his head. Over, and over, and over until it was done. That night, they left his eyes covered, left him lying on the floor, arms rebound. But though they’d exhausted him, and the pain had, thankfully, lessened with further exercise and healing, sleep did not return for a long while.
He spent the night dozing, half dreaming of the days before Lady Gerun had fallen sick, when she could still speak, slow and soft, when she sometimes reached for his hands as he fed her, skin paper soft and cool, bones frail as a bird’s, but the weight heavy when she lost the strength to hold them up on her own. The weaver had never met this woman. She knew only ashes in an urn. Even had they crossed paths when Fiira lived, it would have been of small consequence, one a potential patron. Nothing more. The lady had not interacted often with those beneath her station, so, even then, she might have been nothing more than a hand reaching from behind a curtain, and a voice… A voice like the one that asked him how to find her. Was she lost?
Curdle let his mind drift as the days passed. The time divided between waking, sleeping, and questions he would not answer, though once his arms recovered, he was not spared the beatings he’d expected. It did not matter, he had found an escape in remembering, thinking about what he might tell Miria about the woman she had never known, if she asked. And, when he was feeling up to it, searching for that lost, sideways sensation he could only barely remember to take him back outside himself.
Needless to say, the week went by both quickly and slowly, time blurring into a dizzying amalgamation of not quite there moments as he learned the trick of displacing his mind. Knowledge, however, lent him a caution that kept him grounded far too long, until a storm much like the one that had earlier beset Miria dragged him from the earth with its own headstrong bluster and flung him far afield. He lost an entire day then, but learned a great deal more about what he was doing. Enough, at least, to feel confident when next he managed to separate himself from his body. Confident enough to search out the weaver again. To at least know she was real.
He did not plan to bother her again. Falling into her dreams unknowingly was one thing, but stepping into them with purpose and intent… He had no wish to further invade her privacy. He did not want to be reminded of her memories, and all the reason she had to turn against him. He had thought only to see her, to know where she was, that she was safe. That the urn, the ashes were safe. He would find some other way of communicating, he told himself, though he was not sure it was possible. It was safer than risking her ire should she find him in her dreams again.
But he had not learned his lesson well enough the first time, or did not understand the connection they’d forged. He found her readily enough, searching for the presence of the deer jinni who was guiding the caravan and then following an instinct he was not aware of, a spider silk thread bond pulling him in where she was sleeping. Quiet and still and stretched out in the straw beside her donkey. Safe. And the urn was still in her cart. Draped, now, with a familiar cloth. Until that moment, there had remained some small doubt within him, guard against disappointment, but that sight alone left him limp and liberated, drifting on relief and unaware of his surroundings, unaware of their proximity.
Not touching. But too close to stay apart. She drew him in with another breath, her warmth holding him fast as he fell away from the world, brushing through the strange tumultuous rush of Miria messi. Perhaps it was because he’d already done this once, or because he fought harder to keep hold of his own Self, or simply that he understood immediately that he was dreaming, but when walls rose up around him in a smooth mesh of Sherahd’s decorative style and Renna’s more open, practical architecture, he was no one but his own self. Her mind had not superseded his own, but her dreaming drew out memories he’d been holding close beneath the surface, teasing free the details until every doorway framed a precious moment. Until the hallways settled into the map of a house he’d known for almost sixty years.
Each turn revealed further subtle indications of wealth, from the smooth wooden floors and heavy, dark roof beams in a land where few trees grew, to the saturation of colours in wall hangings and furniture and tastefully placed décor. Even the plants, minimal though they were, evinced a more delicate, thirsty nature than the usual hardy flora of the desert. The inner courtyard was a miniature oasis all its own. But one small alcove did not match the rest.
It was a more gaudy affair, the house where they’d first met: though it was a threadbare ostentation, where the richly dyed curtains were never drawn across the windows for fear of revealing the holes, and the expensive marble facades were often cracked, the mosaics crumbling. But there was still evidence of past successes, and of the noble blood that lived there.
Throughout the halls, cool night air and hot noon sun mixed with children’s laughter, shouts and casual conversation, and deep quiet of emptiness and loss. As with each memory filled room, they followed no particular chronology, no strict timeline, to keep track of. The memories belonged to their rooms, and the rooms had their place in the house, and that was all that mattered. The long hall where guests were celebrated, and only the best was displayed saw merrymaking and feasts with a small, bright woman, dark haired and dark eyed in the centre of it all. The house’s master looking on and laughing with a serving girl on his knee. Beside it was the inner courtyard, open to the elements but closed to the public eye, where three children crowded around their mother as she bent her head to the task of proving that reading was an exciting adventure, and well worth the effort of learning.
From behind ornately carved closed doors came the creaking of a bed.
There was the nursery, where children played and mothers counted their losses. A wide loom, sitting in lonely estate, where a tired old lady created colourful stories to wrap around distant shoulders. Another small room where the tiercel was jessed and tied to its perch, restlessly mewling and fanning sharp, grey wings. The gate, where they rode in laughing together, husband and wife, friends to each other, loving but no longer lovers. The small, but elaborately festooned front entrance where bride met groom for the first time…
The eyes that saw each image were invisible, Curdle’s presence impossible to include within his own remembering, but he had been there for almost every moment, from her tenth year on, and he might have filled each crevice and nook and window with reminiscing. As it was, Miria would find the house’s foundations unusually unstable, rearranging around her as the jinni’s focus shifted. But Curdle himself remained just outside her bedroom door, staring in at the last memory of the woman he’d served.
Her body was lying on the bed, sallow skin, wrinkles, frail bones and hair too thin to do anything with, presented in the finest robe she’d owned. The falcon that was her family’s symbol embroidered in fine silver thread across the rich green hue covering her chest. Head propped up enough that her dead eyes could stare back at him, to take him with her when she finally escaped. There was a sense of repose about the scene. An old woman almost sleeping, finally gone to her final rest. Loneliness, in the light shining across an empty floor. And Curdle’s hands were fists at his sides, a tremor running through him, as he faced the moment he’d stepped beyond the point of turning back.
He still did not know if he had made the right choice.
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