Hienama by Storm Constantine Page B

twitching. Of course, Zeph was
on my chest, like an incubus of nightmare; too heavy. He woke up
too and murmured, ‘Sleep, Jassy. Good.’ Then he settled down
again.
    They were his first words. I’d
have been less surprised if my pony had said my name, I think.
    Zeph followed me around, or
Ysobi, or Orphie, as if he was a duckling following the mother
duck. He tended to regard all three of us as equally responsible
for him. On the nights Ysobi was with us, Zeph would sleep in his
own room without getting out of bed and wandering around. He was
too sensible to do things that were dangerous to his body, like
human children often did. He’d come to the vineyard with me and
suck at the preserved fruits on the table where I worked, his
fingers and lips stained blackberry purple. He’d sit in the Nayati
while Orphie and Ysobi were meditating, and there he liked to play
with water; the fountains in the garden, the shallow pool filled
with water lilies and sleek black fish. We quickly learned he had a
thing about water. He was not particularly fond of strangers and
seemed to prefer a small group of friends, or rather family. He was
impatient when hara tried to fuss over or handle him and would
usually spit at them if they tried it, or else run up the curtains
like a cat, which often almost terrified hara. Despite this, other
hara liked him. You couldn’t really help it: in his face was the
beauty he would one day become. He would permit only Orphie and me
to hug him, although he did like to climb Ysobi’s legs and cling to
a thigh as his father walked around. Occasionally, he’d climb
further, like a kitten, until he was perched on Ysobi’s shoulders.
He liked Ysobi’s hair and enjoyed biting and chewing it.
    This creature, this little
alien, was a marvel. I enjoyed discovering his developing quirks
and preferences. Sometimes, we’d both stop what we were doing and
stare at each other for some moments: I think we both wondered what
we felt, and what we should feel. One day I said to him, ‘I think I
love you, after all.’
    He nodded. ‘Yes.’ He reached
out to pat my face, as if to tell me everything was all right.
    But it was not all right. Not
yet. Zeph knew nothing about more adult concerns, of course. But
others did.
    It might have been coincidence,
but the bad dreams I’d had when Ysobi had first initiated arunic
arts with Gesaril returned. They were hideous waking dreams, when
I’d wake up into utter blackness and sense there was something
malevolent in the room with me. Sometimes, I’d hear voices outside
the house, even though beyond my window there was no longer any
world, only a spinning void. I’d catch my breath, then wake up and
find I’d been dreaming. I’d get out of bed and go down to the
kitchen to get a drink, but when I reached the bottom of the
stairs, blackness would creep in on me again and I wouldn’t be
alone. I’d catch my breath and wake up again. The sequence could
happen many times in a row and lasted for what seemed like hours of
torment.
    I told Sinnar about it,
wondering if it was an after-effect of pearl bearing, and he seemed
to think it might be. ‘You’ve had to adjust dramatically to the
soume aspect of your being,’ he said. ‘Even though you’ve
assimilated it on the surface, I think you’re still churning things
around, deep inside.’
    To help me, one afternoon we
performed a simple majhahn of healing together in a private
open-air Nayati, deep in a part of the woods not many hara used.
Neither he nor I mentioned our intentions to anyhar, which at the
time I didn’t really question, although now it seems strange. We
called upon the dehara, and visited the astral realm in meditation.
Sinnar guided our inner journey to the astral palace of Aruhani,
who although is a dehar of aruna, birth and death, also has a
vicious side. Sinnar asked him to protect me.
    When we came out of the
meditation, I asked him why he’d done that. ‘Do I need protection?’
I