Lips Touch: Three Times(42)
Author: Laini Taylor

"I suppose that’s true. What other creature is helpless for so many years?" she replied.

Mihai was watching her minutely or he might not have noticed the way her fingers fluttered slightly as her hands half lifted themselves to her belly. They dropped away again, but Mihai had seen. He knew the way his own body had held on to memories that the mists had conspired to erase, and the gesture she had unconsciously made — he had seen it before. For centuries, after all, he had hunted pregnant women and watched them, making his choice for his next host. Hers was a gesture of one who knew what it was to carry life inside.

It was impossible. Druj didn’t quicken. The Queen could have no such memories.

Mihai struggled to keep his voice flat as he said, "So the boy is for breeding."

"Yes."

Mihai looked at the miserable, terrified boy and forced himself to smile. "Compliments. No doubt they will breed you a lovely pet."

The wolf Isvant growled and Mihai could tell he wanted the Queen to whisper him back to his human cithra so that he could face Mihai eye to eye, but she didn’t oblige him. She said to Mihai, "Mist-wanderer, you have been too long absent from your own kind. You will return with us to Tajbel, and I will decide what is to be done with you."

The thought of living again among Druj was abhorrent, but Mihai was in no position to refuse. He inclined his head.

She said, "Come. We travel until sunrise. And when we stop, you can tell me something of the mists."

"As you wish, Rathaeshtar," he replied. She urged her goats on and the sledge gathered speed. The wolves bounded through the snow, and Mihai followed. The Queen looked back over her shoulder. "Are you not Naxturu? Won’t you shift cithra?" she asked.

"I keep this shape now."

She didn’t ask him why, but he saw that her eyes, which had been dull and hard when she had first come upon him, were aglitter now with savage curiosity. He knew she didn’t shift either. There had long been murmurs in his own tribe that they didn’t need a Queen, and Mihai guessed she didn’t trust even her own Naxturu to whisper for her out of suspicion they might choose to leave her trapped in wolf form. She kept her flesh under her own command, as did he.

He ran behind the sledge, his gait long and easy, and they made their way higher into the mountains. They stopped at sunrise beside a river and the Queen gave the red-haired boy frigid water to drink and whispered her wolves back to human cithra. There were six of them, three males with the heavy hunched shoulders of Naxturu who spent as much time as wolves as they did as humans, and three females, slimmer but just as bestial as their male counterparts. They stretched their na**d bodies in the falling snow and all but one chose to whisper themselves back to wolves and curl up to sleep through the day, dug into snow burrows. Only Isvant kept his human cithra. He sat na**d with his back against a tree and glared at Mihai.

Mihai returned the look, but he kept his face impassive. It wasn’t easy. It had been a very long time since he had been in the company of his own kind. He wondered if they would see the change in him somehow, or maybe smell it. He was sitting on a rock beside the river and suddenly he couldn’t stand Isvant’s scrutiny. He stood and stripped off his clothes and dove into the water. It was snow-melt cold and it served to shock him out of his uneasiness. He surfaced. The current was carrying him away; he swam against it with powerful, easy strokes. Isvant stood and watched to make sure he didn’t try to escape. Mihai swam back to the bank, shook himself, and sat na**d beside his clothes.

His hair was still streaming when the Queen joined him. She sat beside him on the rock. "Tell me about the mists," she said, her voice half-whisper, half-purr.

So, Mihai thought, her curiosity had gotten the better of her. Still staring ahead at the black water with its traffic of swift ice, he said, "I used to think they were a boundary, an ending beyond which there was nothing. But what if they’re not? What if the mists are like the edge of the map when the cartographer has drawn all he knows, when the explorers’ ships have not yet delved the unknown? What if there’s more?"

"More?"

"Surely you’ve felt it. When you go into a human, your almost-memories sharpen. Each time, you believe you will remember."

She didn’t respond at once and he didn’t look at her. After a long pause she said, very quietly, "Yes."

"And it becomes a madness and a need, but you never remember."

Again, "Yes."

"And you’re certain that once there was something else. Your body remembers it."

"Yes." Her voice sounded raw now.

"The thing your body remembers most…" Mihai began, turning to glance at her. For the second time he glimpsed the subtle movement of her arms and hands. It was, unmistakably, the gesture of a woman who knows what it is to be full with child. His words faltered. Deep within himself, a memory shifted. Mists parted. Something drew into the light. His eyes flared wide when he saw what they were and the Queen saw his shock before he could hide it.

Her own eyes narrowed in suspicion, but there was something else in them too. A gleam of hunger.

"What?" she demanded. "What does it remember most?"

Mihai’s thoughts moiled and spun and he fought to hide his confusion, sure that any moment it would reveal his otherness and give her a reason to end his life. "For me," he said, with an effort at calmness, "the thing that brings the memories closest is … a kiss."

"A kiss!" she repeated, surprised.

It wasn’t a lie. Something about a kiss, back when he had worn humans, had always fanned at the mists like a gusting wind, chasing them back, thinning them, to show him the shadows of what waited within. He chanced a look at the Queen. There was a small, quizzical smile on her perfect lips and he tried smiling too, though his heart was beating fast as a human’s and memories were rising up around him like ghosts. With absolute clarity, he knew something he had never guessed. He had not felt such a deep shuddering shock since his animus was dragged out of Yazad’s soul. That time, he had discovered he was not human. This time, he remembered that he had been.

"Mazishta," he whispered. "There was something else once, something more. I’ve seen it."

Her smile faded and he could see her longing to believe him. "What have you seen?" she asked in a husky whisper.

You, he wanted to say. I have seen you. But he said, "I have seen a woman with a mind as sharp as a shard of obsidian, and as brilliant as the moon. Mysteries opened themselves up to her and revealed their quiet centers. She wanted to know everything. She wanted to live forever."