Hienama by Storm Constantine Page A

equinox. I noticed the pearl had
gone brittle and cracks appeared in it. Transfixed, I put it on the
kitchen table and sat next to it, watching. I drank some wine as I
did so. Eventually, it fell apart completely and a weird little
animal crawled out. We stared at each other for some moments. It
was most disorientating. I said, ‘Hello, creature,’ and the harling
lifted its head, on a neck that seemed a little too long and thin,
and sniffed the air. I had some cream cheese in the cold room and
went to fetch it.
    When I returned, after only a
few seconds, the harling was examining the broken pieces of the
pearl. He turned quickly, defensively, when he heard me approach. I
offered the cheese and he ate it from my hand like a wary horse,
flinching back if I made any sudden movements. I could not imagine
how this creature could in any way grow to be a har. He was
intelligent, that was obvious, and more like a colt or a calf than
a cub or a pup, since he could move about and eat immediately after
hatching. He was alien to behold because he wasn’t at all like a
human baby, but more like an older child in miniature form. He had
a sense of survival and cunning. His first noises were hisses.
    Orphie found me attempting
communication with my alien son. He walked in through the kitchen
door, stiffened in horror at what he beheld, and said, ‘Jass, it’s
freezing in here! The window’s open. Get a blanket for the harling.
He needs bathing as well. Are you mad?’
    ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I
said. ‘Look at him.’
    Orphie picked the harling up.
At first he struggled and hissed, then became quiet. ‘He’s
shivering,’ Orphie said. ‘Get a blanket, Jass.’
    ‘He’s had some cheese,’ I said.
Then I went to fetch a blanket.
    In the bedroom, I nearly passed
out. I’d given birth and it was a monster. Somehow I got back
downstairs.
    The harling was asleep in
Orphie’s arms and now appeared less alien. He was covered in a
viscous fluid, which must have protected him inside the pearl. I
saw then he had an umbilical cord, or rather had once had, as it
appeared Orphie had cut it. Orphie wrapped the blanket I’d brought
around the harling; it draped down to the floor. ‘Are you drunk?’
Orphie asked, rather sharply.
    I shook my head. ‘No. I’m just
concussed by life.’
    ‘It’s a good job I’m here,
then. Get some warm water. We’ll bathe him.’
    We dabbed at the sleeping
harling with wet cloths and as I did so, I was thinking: This
came out of me. This is mine. I thought I should be feeling
something more than shock.
    Strangely enough, I didn’t
consider sending Orphie to fetch Ysobi. I was content for it just
to be Orphie and me dealing with this unhinging event.
    ‘He’ll sleep a lot at first,’
Orphie said. ‘And eat, of course. They grow very quick, Jass. You
can almost see it happening.’
    ‘We don’t know each other,’ I
said. ‘How does it work, all that hostling stuff? Shouldn’t I be
feeling sentimental or something?’
    ‘I’ll help you,’ Orphie said.
And that was that.
    I named him Zephyrus, for the
wind that had blown in through the open kitchen window, right over
him as he’d crawled from the pearl. It shortened nicely to Zeph.
When Ysobi was staying overnight, he slept in his own room, but
when I was alone he’d slither under my blankets and curl up on my
chest like a cat, an ear pressed to the place where my heart was
beating beneath the skin. It was a strange relationship we had, a
sort of mutual wary respect that I hoped would one day turn into
affection and trust. He trusted me completely, but I didn’t trust
him. I thought he might try to smother me in my sleep. It was
because he had a thinking mind and I didn’t know what was in it.
Surely, a hostling should be closer psychically to his son than I
was? Zeph was part of me and yet not. I couldn’t hear his thoughts,
even when I tried really hard. One night, I woke from a dream of
falling. I woke up gasping, my limbs