Текст книги "Trill and Bajor "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: J. Kim,Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Rena

“How old is this place?” Jacob asked.

Rena tried to remember details from her last art-history course, one of the few historical classes first-year students were required to attend, but she had studied halfheartedly, distracted by Topa’s deteriorating condition, so her memories of the details were scant. “Not really sure,” she admitted. “Twelve, fifteen thousand years at least. Not as old as some other cities that have been unearthed. Not like B’hala, but old enough. Do they have ruins like this on Earth?”

Jacob shook his head, then seemed to reconsider the question. “Well, sure, there are ruins. Mostly temples or public buildings like the Parthenon or the Colosseum in Rome. I’m sorry—I know you don’t know what these places are—but they’re a few thousand years old at most and many of them aren’t much better than piles of rubble compared with this place. There have been a lot of wars on Earth and, compared with you, we only recently learned the value of preserving the past.” He took a step backward, as if one more step would give him the perspective he needed, then stood transfixed by the edifice before him.

The site—the archeologists called it Yyn—was open to the public only a few days every year, but despite this fact attendance was sparse so early in the morning. Rena assured him that within a few hours the place would be packed with tourists, making it more than worth their time to visit early, though they hadn’t been able to convince Parsh and Halar to leave their beds and join them.

Yesterday’s ten-kilometer hike to the site had flown by—much sharing of personal stories, discussion about Jacob’s new project reworking old Bajoran legends into modern contexts, Halar’s religious studies, and Parsh’s confession that after university he hoped to open an inn on the coast near Mylea. Kail—or his absence from this trip—hadn’t been discussed, thank the Prophets. To placate Halar’s curiosity, Jacob had gamely offered insights into Benjamin Sisko and had appeared amused at her gleeful reception of each tidbit. She had been amazed at how little she seemed to know about her friends. Having shared their growing-up years together had presumably created deep connections between them, though Rena wondered, perhaps, if she had assumed much where she had truly only seen the surface. Only Jacob’s presence could explain these new insights. He had a steady, kind way about him that allowed people to feel comfortable peeling away their layers to reveal themselves. Take Parsh, for example, who had been the pale, skinny boy who had a crush on her as long as she could remember. Listening to him articulate his future plans to Jacob, she sensed a passion and depth in Parsh she didn’t know existed.

Now, though, watching Jacob’s face as he studied the cliff face, she wondered what he saw. Did he see rock with faces carved into it or stories coming to life or history? Could he coax them into revealing their secrets the way he had with Parsh? And yes, she had to confess, even her.

Though she had lived within a day’s travel of Yyn, had heard about the place her entire life, she had never taken the time to come here. Now, though, seeing it through this foreigner’s eyes, she began to wonder why. In and around the low buildings, narrow pillars, and roped-off sections of engraved paving stones walked small groups of tourists, including one or two families, but mostly pairs like her and Jacob, though few were studying the carved wall as intently as her friend. As was usually the case, most of the other tourists were either dividing their attention between reference padds or listening to interactive tour guides through small earplugs as they slowly ambled along.

The cliff they stood before was over fifty meters high, and despite the stone’s age and proximity to the sea, the carvings were remarkably unweathered. Perhaps it was some secret of the carver’s art that Rena did not know, but the expressions on the faces of the twenty or twenty-five tall, narrow individuals were as distinctive as those on the men and women who wandered through the ruins at the cliff’s foot. One—the woman whose feet they stood at—was obviously a pretty but vain young maiden, and another, the slumped figure to her right, was clearly an avaricious merchant who saw none of the wonders around him, not even the pretty maiden. Rena wondered if the artists who had created these works had modeled these characters after individuals, men and women of their acquaintance, or if they were all conjured up out of someone’s imagination. There could be no denying that the design of all the figures had been the result of a single guiding individual; though each face was different, they were all the product of one remarkable mind with a compelling vision.

“Do you have anything like this on Earth?”

“I don’t think so,” Jacob said. “I’ve heard of large relief sculptures carved into cliff walls, though I can’t claim to have seen them with my own eyes, but something like this right in the middle of a town? This was supposed to have been the town center, right?”

“Right.”

“Then, no, never anything like this.” He inhaled deeply, then let the breath out slowly. When he was finished, his eyes shined brightly. “Does anyone know who did it? Does it have religious significance?”

“Culturally, Yyn is primarily known for the Legend of Astur, the pageant we’ll see later. But there’s probably some religious meaning too that’s been lost over time.”

“And Bajor was aware of the Prophets this far back?”

“Sure,” Rena said. Recalling her readings from art history, she said, “One theory is that the artists wanted to create something that the Prophets could see from their home in the Celestial Temple.”

Jacob smiled, but he didn’t take his eyes off the carvings. As they talked, he continued to step backward, to try to take in the whole work. “Well, that’s one argument for working on a large scale.”

“Yes. The other theory is that these are the Prophets.”

This made Jacob look at her. “Really? That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone on Bajor attempting to personalize them. I mean, on Earth most gods and goddesses have some kind of form. Not all of them, mind you. I can think of at least one religion where the believers are prohibited from attempting to visualize the primary god, but for most of the others there’s some generally acknowledged avatar. But I can’t remember ever seeing a depiction of the Prophets.”

“I don’t know of any others,” Rena said. “It kind of makes you wonder, though. Look at those faces: it’s like every one of them was someone the artists were intimately familiar with, like they were people who lived here. Why would someone decide that the Prophets looked like someone who lived down the street?”

Rena looked over at Jacob and saw that though he was still staring at the cliff face, he was no longer really seeing what was before his eyes. “I can’t imagine,” he said softly. Then he seemed to sense her gaze and looked over at her and smiled. “Maybe the Prophets came down to meet the artist and she said, ‘Hey, you look just like my cousin Fila.’ ”

“You think the artist was a woman?”

“Is there any reason why that couldn’t be?”

“None that I know,” Rena said. “Which reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to show you.” Slipping her backpack off her shoulders, she unlaced the flap and rooted around inside for her new drawing pad. Flipping open its cover, she held up the sketch, a charcoal and pastel piece.

“Topa’s memorial,” Jake said. “It’s beautiful.”

Rena watched as his eyes took in the drawing. “I couldn’t sleep last night so I stayed up and worked.”

“Is this the final draft?”

“I think so. Putting aside all the baggage of what I thought I should do, I tried to remember how I saw Topa. I mean, I knowall the facts, and I think creatively, I was stumbling over them.”

“I’m impressed.” And she could tell from his voice that he was not delivering an idle compliment. Leaning in closer to study the drawing more carefully in the morning light, Jacob reached out, but stopped a millimeter short of touching the page, then traced the outline of the arch, studied the runes and pictographs Rena had incorporated into this latest design. “Will you explain it to me?”

They found a bench across from the stone faces. Jacob kept the notebook on his lap while Rena explained the drawing to him. “I’m working in a few gemstones that are native to Mylea,” she began. “Then I chose the style of runes used here at Yyn.” Pointing to a row of writing, Rena said, “The text reads, ‘I know the light is there. When it finally breaks through the mist, I will be ready.’ ” And then she explained her memories of Topa from when she was a little girl, of how he would stand in the street and wait for the sun. “It isn’t dramatic. No recitations of his exploits in the resistance. But to me, this is Topa. I hope it’s enough.”

“He asked you because he wanted to be remembered the way yousaw him—not the way everyone else did,” Jacob said pragmatically. “Maybe he didn’t want to be known as part of Mylea’s history—just as a grandfather.”

Rena wasn’t sure she agreed with him and said so.

“Sometimes, there are good reasons to let go of the past. If we’re constantly looking backward, sometimes we don’t move forward.” Jacob scooted closer to Rena, leaning down so only she could hear him speak. “Once when my dad tried to explain his first encounter with the Prophets, he told me that in the vision, he was in his ship during the Borg attack when my mother died. The Prophets showed him that even though he had physically moved forward in time, he remained trapped in the past.”

“Why would Topa be trapped in the past? He was a hero—one of Mylea’s greatest!”

“I probably sound like an old man when I talk like this, but you have to know that what seems heroic from a distance sometimes isn’t when you’re close up. I lived through a battle in which I saw people at their best and their worst. Many of them were killed or maimed—it was a nightmare. I have friends with similar stories. But to hear the official reports you would have thought we were conquering heroes. Topa’s past might be exactly as heroic as you’ve been told, but it might not. So what you’ve done here is told the truth—your truth. That’s what matters.”

“I don’t know…” Rena said, wrinkling her forehead and contemplating where she might make a few more changes.

Jacob snapped the notebook closed and stuffed it back into her pack. “I do. We’re going to finish checking out this ruin, we’re going to meet Parsh and Halar for lunch. Then tonight we’re going to watch this famous Legend of Astur pageant. An exfiancé of a friend of mine informed me that it’s quite romantic.”

Men.Rolling her eyes, she pulled him off the bench by the hand and dragged him off to see the next cluster of ancient buildings.

Within the last hour, the vestiges of sunset had been wiped away by night. Halar, Parsh, Rena, and Jacob had joined the thousands of visitors spread out over a grassy hillside that formed one of Yyn’s boundaries. The audience faced a large semicircle dais at the base of the hill.

A little giddy from the wine at dinner, Halar chatted more than she normally did, but Rena didn’t believe the wine could be blamed for Parsh’s moony-eyed gazes at her friend. She had never considered them a potential couple, but maybe circumstances had never been right before. The inverse was certainly true: Something that had been right for a long time (her and Kail) could become wrong over time. Thinking of Kail and the ugliness of their breakup, Rena felt grateful that both of her friends had treated Jacob kindly, including them in their plans and conversations; remarkably, Halar had managed to rein in her eagerness at having access to a Sisko. Of course, Rena and Jacob weren’t an official couple,which might make it easier for Halar and Parsh to accept him without seeing him as a replacement for Kail. Rena hadn’t yet defined what she had with Jacob, but the signs were there: occasionally taking her hand, sitting beside her at dinner, the lingering looks when he thought she wasn’t paying attention.

A blanket spread out on the grass, Jacob had arranged himself so that Rena could sit between his legs and lean against him. The intimacy of the seating arrangement simultaneously tantalized and terrified her, but the intuitive trust that had existed between them since the start won her over. Once she was situated, he gathered her long, curly hair into his hand and draped it so it hung over one shoulder; he rested his head on the other. Rena propped her arms on his thighs, dangling her hands off his knees. As always, silence felt comfortable between them. Neither felt obliged to speak for the sake of making noise. Instead, matching the rhythm of her breath with Jacob’s became a soothing meditation. Fully relaxed, she snuggled back into the warmth of his body. He pulled her tight against him. Glancing over at Parsh and Halar, she was pleased to see that Parsh had overcome his usual shyness and had put and arm around Halar’s shoulders. They looked happy.

Soon, the first moon climbed over Yyn’s towering cliffs, blanching them cold, white-gray, signaling that the longest day of the year had passed into memory. As if to hold on to the lost light a little longer, a series of massive bonfires erupted on each side of the dais, coaxing a collective “ah!” from the crowd.

Accompanied by sad, soaring flutes, and stringed belaklavions, dancers, clothed in gauzy lavender, sea green, blush pink, and daylight blue twirled onto the stage, their robes flowing out like sea anemones’ tentacles floating in a tidal pool. Offstage, the narrator’s clear voice introduced the story of Astur, the water spirit who, on solstice morning, had left the ocean in the form of a woman, to search for a young fisherman whose face she had seen when he’d glanced over the side of his boat to retrieve a lost coin. Since the story was conveyed almost entirely through dance, Rena explained the unfolding action to Jacob using the words Topa had told her at a long-ago bedtime.

Astur found her love but couldn’t persuade him to leave his life on land to join her in the sea. Because her father, the King of the Reef, had granted her human form only as long as there was daylight, Astur and her lover attempted to hold back the night by a great fire, hoping to deceive the King. But neither a creature of the sea nor a man of the land could withstand the inferno’s heat: the lovers were consumed by the flames, conveyed by long lengths of shimmering gold fabric on the stage.

At last, the dancer portraying the King of the Reef came onto the stage and lifted a large milky white glass oval off the ground where the fire had turned the sand to glass. In memory of his lost child, he threw the glass high into the air. The crowd—including Rena—held their breath waiting for the inevitable crash.

Instead, on all sides, small flames appeared as thousands of candles ignited instantaneously, as if by magic, creating the illusion of floating in a candlelight sea. Delighted, Rena clapped. This was far more enchanting than the bedtime version she was familiar with.

“And so it is,” the narrator concluded, “that on summer solstice night, sea glass turns to flame as the King of the Reef hopes that his daughter and her lover can live again.”

The stage lights dimmed, ending the pageant, but the candles remained, waves of flickering candlelight flowing as far as Rena could see.

As people started getting up around them and leaving, Jacob leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “What happens now?”

“Parsh sort of explained this to you a while ago, but now that you’ve seen the pageant, it probably makes more sense. The story goes that those couples who capture one of the water spirit’s candles have the King of the Reef’s blessing for one night of marriage. When the sun returns, the spell is broken.”

“Sounds like an excuse for people to make love.”

“It is,” Rena conceded with a smile, “but it’s a romantic one, don’t you think?”

Taking their cues from those around them, Jacob and Rena stood; she folded up their blanket, packed up a pair of wine-glasses they never used, and slipped on her shoes. Halar grabbed her by the sleeve and dragged her out of earshot of both Jacob and Parsh.

“I want Parsh to bring me a candle,” she confided.

Rena blinked her surprise, but quickly gave her approval by enveloping her friend in a big hug. As she broke away from their embrace, she saw Parsh coming toward them, a candle cupped in his palm. She spun Halar around and wished her luck.

When Halar and Parsh had vanished into the crowd, Rena started toward the line of departing audience members, quickly realizing that Jacob wasn’t with her. She scanned the throngs of people. She knew that the odds of finding him in the dark were slim, but she hoped his height would give him away. When he didn’t immediately appear, she began calling for him, feeling a low level of panic start to rise within her. Logic took over. If we accidentally separate, we should meet back at the hostel,she recalled the four of them agreeing yesterday. Since most of the audience appeared content to linger around the candlelit ruins, Rena met little resistance as she raced down the hill and gravel road to the hostel.

The yard surrounding the hostel was nearly empty. The banquet tables held the skeletal remains of their earlier feasting. Sprays of starlight appeared between the tree branches. Low, throaty laughter came from the dimly lit porch, where groups of festival visitors had gathered around tables to play games or drink wine or talk late into the night. Still no Jacob. Circling around back and through a tree grove, Rena nearly tripped over the legs of a couple who hadn’t bothered to find a more private place to begin their celebrating. She was about to start down the path to the beach when a hand touched her sleeve.

“Rena.”

Jumping nearly out of her skin, she spun on her heel. “Don’t you ever leave like…” Her voice trailed off when she saw that Jacob carried a candle between his hands.

She didn’t know what to say. In her heart, she had known this would happen—hoped it would—and now he stood before her, his face cast in warm yellow candlelight, and she had to decide.

“I know you’ve made promises to Topa. I know you feel like you have obligations to Mylea,” he said, his voice quaking from nerves. “You have to believe that I’m not asking you to walk away from those commitments—”

“I know,” she whispered. She knew from the story he wrote for her, from the inspiration she felt to create when she spent time with him. Through his eyes, she saw Bajor and life more clearly than she ever had. The tightness in her throat released and in its place heat tunneled through her. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Whoa—” he sputtered, holding the candle away from his body. “Let’s not follow the legend too literally or we’ll be glass by morning.”

Smiling, she kissed him again; then, wordlessly, she led him inside.

Jacob had time only to place the candle on the dresser and lock the door before Rena had pulled him down to sit on the bedside.

“If this is going too fast for you, we don’t have to—”

Placing her finger against his lips, she shushed him. She slipped off her sandals and sweater and she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, resting her head on his shoulder. Because they were comfortable that way, they sat in silence. Jacob traced circles on her bare arm and shoulder with his finger; his feather-light touch became more exploratory, and she shivered.

To halt him, she flattened her palm against his chest. With trembling fingers, she unfastened his shirt, parting it to expose his skin, and pressed her cheek against him. He smelled like musk and candle smoke and the field grasses above Yyn. She began a delicate trail of kisses up his breastbone, murmuring his name, until he captured her face in his hands. The inscrutable expression on his face worried her for a fraction of a second until he claimed her mouth with dizzying intensity. We’re going through with this,she thought over and over again. He wants this as much as I do.

Breaking away from their kiss, Jacob reached over her to deactivate the lights, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her down onto the bed. Lying side by side, they faced each other, at first not touching, having only the candle’s sepia glow to see by.

My turn.Sitting up, Rena reached for the tie of her blouse, loosened the neckline and pulled the blouse over her head. She felt his gaze. Before, when they had been together, it had been under the cover of darkness. Now, having him look at her, she imagined the way she studied the subjects she painted, and was filled with nervous excitement.

From behind, his hands went gently around both sides of her waist, fanned against her hips, and he buried his lips in the slope between her shoulder and neck. Arching into his touch, she cradled her neck against his shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling at last that things were as they should be. Complete.

When the midmorning sunlight woke Rena, she rolled onto her side to find Jacob watching her. She must be a sight: her hair in its customary wild and bushy morning style, her lips swollen, and virtually every centimeter of her aching from exertion. She stretched, raising her arms above her head, and then, feeling oddly shy, pulled the sheet back up to cover her fully. “Hey,” she said, offering him a drowsy, crooked grin.

“Hey yourself,” he said, looking at her expectantly. Resting his head on his elbow, he seemed a little too self-satisfied for Rena to be at ease.

Wrinkling her forehead, she said warily, “You look like you’re going to explode if you don’t say whatever it is you’re thinking—”

“I…I think I might be in love with you,” he blurted out.

She arched an eyebrow in surprise.

“I know it’s sudden and all—”

And then instinctively Rena knew, without being told, that his declaration came from genuine feeling and not from the emotional miasma of sex. Smiling, she leaned over and planted a firm kiss on his lips and pulled him on top of her, relishing his weight. “Besides that other thing, what were you thinking just now?”

“Words…ideas…the nucleus of something I want to write later. I don’t know if it makes any sense, but I feel like I’ve been seeing life through a broken lens that’s suddenly sharply focused.”

Rena smiled knowingly against his chest. “That’s an artist’s job: to see the truth of the world and people and communicate it. Often, we fall back on what we know, not what we see. There’s a difference.”

“You sound like someone I used to know,” Jacob said. “She died. One of Dukat’s men killed her. It was…” He inhaled deeply, then sighed. “I miss her.” Looking down at her and leaning in toward her, he touched his forehead to hers. “You would have liked her. Ziyal was an artist, too. There’s a display of her work on the station. Have you heard about it?”

Rena shook her head. “No,” she said. “I haven’t paid much attention to what was goes on up on the space station. But I’m certainly going to look her up now.” As he drifted into memory, she felt a brief flash of jealousy. She asked, “Did you love her?”

He considered her question then said, “In another time and place, I might have, eventually. But no, we were just friends, for the short time we had togteher.”

“And you cherish that,” Rena said, “just as you cherish every other moment of your life, and everyone in it.”

“You understand,” he whispered, placing a soft kiss on her forehead. “I feel like you see me.”

“I see you because I love you,” Rena said without thinking about the words, and knew it was true.

Then he whispered something against her skin that she thought she heard, but couldn’t quite bring herself to believe.

She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Ask me that again.”