The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [16]
Turning in its sleep, the cherub snorted.
Both Nahid and Name of the Sun had been rendered insignificant, as if, in that second, their folly was exposed, the futility of their actions and the futility of their upcoming arguments, maybe even the futility of everything they have ever done or will do, was laid bare. They drifted, along with their victim, silenced.
Until Nahid dismissed all of this nonsense by shaking the cherub roughly by the shoulder.
“Wake the fuck up,” he said. “Wake up.”
All he understood was that things had gone wrong. The act was nothing like the foreplay. He tried so hard not to remember the crippling fear he had felt looking into the chatelaine’s chambers. What had transfixed him? How would this deed bring his sister back, anyhow? Would it, for some reason, drive this other girl away, this hemo? Possibly. Maybe it already had.
Nahid shook the chatelaine’s pet again, and it woke, turning its babyface toward him. Squinting against the light, the creature frowned. And blinked. “Who are you?” Sitting up on the worn wooden seat, knuckling its eyes. “Where’s my mom?”
“Go,” spat Nahid. “Fly away!”
“Am I in a boat?” The cherub smiled and appeared to be excited about its predicament; it stood on chubby legs to shake out its wings. Nearly as tall as the seated abductors, it peered around, into the darkness, not afraid at all. The boy suspected that the beast was too simple for sensible reactions.
“Fly away.” When Name of the Sun spoke, she employed much softer tones than had Nahid. “You can go now. Fly away.”
“But what about my mom?”
“Don’t be a fool,” said the kholic. “That woman wasn’t your mother. Why would your mother keep you in a cage?”
The cherub only blinked.
“Nahid.”
“Ever thought about that? You believe she was the mother of all those other poor creatures? In all those cages? Now go, get lost.”
“Nahid,” repeated Name of the Sun. Statements were implied in the way she said his name, convictions and condemnations both.
He scowled.
“She would sing to me,” the cherub said, a far-away look in its eyes, as if it had not been listening (which, indeed, it had not). “Every morning, she would sing to me. If she was feeling okay. A lot of mornings she just stayed in bed. She would rub my back with her fingers, pushing them through the bars. She smelled of oranges and wine. Sometimes, when her sleepover friends had dressed and gone, and they had long-since finished the wrestling games they liked to play, light strained through the clouds—”
“Fucking go!”
With a start, the cherub lifted off, narrowly avoiding the swing of the shunting pole. Nahid’s words echoed.
Name of the Sun cautioned Nahid yet again, disapproving of his methods, of his abruptness.
He had just hidden there, quivering!
Over the boat, staring down, the poor cherub continued to fuss and scold and ask in annoying tones about its mother until the pole whistled through the air a second time; only then did the beast circle—once, twice—flying higher, a blur on the far range of the light. Even the most idiotic of creations must eventually understand the obviousness of such situations, and soon it was gone, flapping away, flying its pudgy self into the eternal black of its new home.
Distant dripping.
The scent of sulfur.
Eyes watched, from the dark.
Feeling heavy and slow, wishing he could have remained forever in the streets, with his sister, Nahid ground his teeth. Name of the Sun, looking up, saw absolutely nothing. When she looked at Nahid, she still saw nothing, not in his shadowed face, familiar yet so strange to her now. Dark eyes floated over a darker mask. He would not meet her gaze.
What had they just accomplished? What was this ridiculous gesture? Name of the Sun had watched the chatelaine trying to get off, as attachments and devices were enabled, and clumsy companions tried various techniques, and she remembered looking down at her, passed out in her bed, an old and skinny woman, much smaller than Name of the Sun. More