Western Port, Isla Dzum
He would have borne it; he could have borne it. It was his to bear, for a long time now, and although he had never found his way towards anything like happiness, he thought that he had, at least, accepted it. There was nothing else he could do.
It was a small cart. In the furthest back corner of it, with trunks between him and the others, he could feel it. It buzzed, and rattled, and scraped his nerves raw. He had thought the memory of it bad enough; he had been wrong. He should have sat in the front; he should have walked behind. He couldn’t; he couldn’t leave Niccolette alone with him.
He should have told her.
He should have told her. He had wanted to, there on the couch; he had searched for the words and found them. She would believe him; she knew what he was, and that he was a liar, but it would be pointless to lie about something. Yes, perhaps she would have thought him delusional with his illness, or confused, but he could have made her believe him. They could have – they could have –
He had not told her. He would not tell her. He didn’t know why, except that –
He thought of him, in the engine room, coming close. (He hadn’t known, then; he hadn’t known; he had offered him his hand, pulled him to his feet – ) He thought of him sitting in the captain’s room, the careful truths he’d told.
He thought of a man’s hands holding him close, the gentle scratch of a beard against his skin, of lightning over the Mahogany, and stars shining through the sky like a blanket. He knew better than to think of such things, but he couldn’t put them aside. Like looking down at the stump of his hand, Aremu thought, those first few weeks. He had known how it would make him feel, and he had done it anyway, again and again, because to look away, knowing the truth, was even more painful.
He had not told her.
Even now, the three of them were sitting in the cart, making their way towards the boat which would take them to Mere Mauthua. Their job, Aremu reminded himself, was to protect him – to keep him alive – he found himself shaking, then, and he stilled his hand against the leg of his pants, and closed his eyes. He felt it, the scrape of it against his skin, and he had to swallow a moan.
It had been a long, miserable day already. Aremu had been scarcely able to eat, unable to sleep; he knew what he saw, when he closed his eyes. Hands, rough, strong, familiar hands with silvery scars on their knuckles, and then at another look, thin, small, pale hands, with veins and scattered freckles and a dusting of red hair. Flat gray eyes –
Shame, he thought. Shame. His own face – his own – dappled with stars -
(Does he know I died?)
Phaeta, he thought. Phaeta – and then – a sudden surge of something like fury that swelled up in him without a name. How dare you – how dare you walk about in another man’s body – you monstrous –
Aremu choked it down, and swallowed it back. His breathing picked up, and he kept the whimpers in with effort, grinding his jaw shut, shaking against the bench.
“Aremu?” Niccolette’s voice was soft, and when he looked up she was watching him, a little frown on her forehead, worry written across her face, easy to read in the near-dark. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Aremu lied, and he found something like a smile for her, scraped it up from somewhere in his chest, and it was a lie too, that smile. “Tired, still.”
Niccolette nodded, slowly, looking at him. She looked away, then, out of the back of the cart, at the road they were leaving behind.
He is a monster, Aremu wanted to say. He is – he is –
(I’m a monster.)
Aremu closed his eyes, and the cart rocked onward, slowly and steadily. He could feel it, still, scraping against his skin. As if, he thought, tears burning behind closed eyes, the mona themselves were made as sick as Aremu by his very existence. There was a kofi leaf, lined with gold, and pale slender fingers painting strange symbols in dark red on the floor. His own face, his eyes dark. He held still until he could be sure the tears would not leak out, and it was pity, then, a sudden swell of it. He should have told her. He had not. He would not. He had to.
Aremu could not have said how long it had been. He knew he had not slept, but neither had he quite been awake; there was only the steady repetition of thoughts that went nowhere, and the ache that rippled through him, and the images he could but unsee, when he was too weak to keep his eyes open. They came to a stop, eventually, and Niccolette was climbing down from the cart, and he was too. Aremu waited, and held in the back of it, and watched them. He stifled a groan with his hand when it moved away, when the air around him was still again, and he found something to do – there were straps to tighten, and trunks to push to the edge of the cart, and he could put off seeing him in the light, just a little longer.
Finally, Aremu climbed out of the edge of the cart, and stood shakily at the edge of the dock. The harbor town was loud in the evening light behind them. Aremu could see a group of human children chasing a ball around, laughing. He watched them, for a moment, and turned back slowly to the pile of luggage on the ground, to the ferry before then, the gangway leading from the dock to the boat. Slowly, slowly, his gaze traveled to Niccolette and to –
He looked away, then, back down to the luggage. The human porters were already managing it, and Aremu tucked his hand and the prosthetic into his pockets, and was quiet. The weight of his knife at his back was oddly reassuring, as if he might – he might –
Niccolette was watching him again. Aremu looked up at her, and found another lie of a smile. Niccolette exhaled, softly, through her nose, and turned, and made her way neatly along the gangway, one small hand holding the ropes as she went, light cloak swishing softly against her dress. Aremu followed her across, quick and close, skirting wide around him, and finding his balance on the gently rocking boat easily enough.
He ached, Aremu thought, all throughout. He did not know how to bear this load; he wished he could set it down. He knew, now, he never would.