Ricardo Pinto - The Chosen

This must be what it's like to receive Apotheosis,' muttered Osidian.

Seeing the serious, fixed wonder of his face, Carnelian crept away and kicked water over him so that Osidian grew angry and chased him. They wrestled their patterns across the mud and, thrashing, rolled into the shallows. They rose panting, their laughter gashing white their muddy faces. The deepest pool they could find only came up to their waists. They washed each other. Osidian stopped Carnelian when he would have had more play. He seemed remote.

'What're you thinking?' Carnelian said, as lightly as he could.

Osidian turned to him, as beautiful as a marble god. This morning we used up the last of the paint. I didn't expect that we'd stay down here so long.'

Carnelian gazed at him, aching with a longing to engulf him so intense it almost made him cry. Instead, he grinned outrageously and slapped the ridging of Osidian's belly. 'What of it? We'll have to hide out the day in the shade. The night'll still be ours.'

'But how shall we return?' Osidian turned to look back at the Pillar of Heaven, a thunderous mass against the mauve sky.

Carnelian looked at it, tried to see where the Halls of Thunder were, remembered his father with a pang. He had forgotten him and that his people would be expecting him back.

Osidian's sombre looks stopped him passing it all off with a jest. It would have been hollow, anyway. They went back together, gouging the mud with their toes, so close that often their shoulders and elbows touched.

'One more day?' Carnelian asked at last.

Osidian looked sidelong at him, and gave the slightest of nods.

Carnelian sat up. Something had woken him. He stood up, cursed under his breath as he tottered waiting to see if he had woken Osidian. When there was no stirring at his feet, he ducked out from under the sheltering branches. A miraculous ceiling of stars dizzied him. The moon had set. The Pillar of Heaven was a hole cut out from half the sky. He was sure he could see some tiny flecks of light floating there near its top. He shook his head. It must be illusion. The Halls of Thunder were too far away. A sound. A faint, creaking sound. He turned to look across the Yden. Stars snared in its mirrors. Beyond, the pale, mountain wall stirred its reflection into the thick black Skymere. There it was again. A creaking and, perhaps, floating above it the tickle of faraway bells. He saw the lights. A necklace of tiny diamonds stretching across the crater's black throat. He watched its creep make tiny sounds. People were moving along the Ydenrim.

Something brushed his arm. He cried out. 'Hush,' hissed the shadow, grabbing hold of him. 'I'm sorry I woke you,' said Carnelian, fitting his head into the space between Osidian's neck and shoulder. He could feel Osidian's heart beating through his stiff body. By the shape of his profile, Carnelian knew he was watching the lights. Another set had appeared, off to the south. 'What are they?' Carnelian whispered.

He waited and was going to repeat the question when Osidian said, 'Processions of the Chosen.' He had returned to Quya for the first time in days.

'What does it mean?'

"That we must return to the sky.'

Carnelian tried to get more out of him, unsuccessfully. He let him move away.

'Let us grab what sleep we can before daybreak,' said Osidian.

Carnelian felt a twinge of irritation. With his resumption of the Quya, Osidian was turning himself back into a stranger. Carnelian's stomach knotted. Was he regretting their lovemaking? Carnelian followed him back. Crouching under the branches, he lay down, denying himself the desire to touch him. He lay for an age, miserable, bound on the rack of the worries he had put aside, until sleep released him into a fitful dream.

Reaching out for Osidian and not finding him, Carnelian awoke. He sat up and saw through twigs and leaves the morning bright on the faraway Sacred Wall. The Skymere smiled its alluring blue. The waders stirred the glimmering lagoons.

He crept out from under the branches, stretching, delighting in the air's warm caress. He looked for Osidian. The Pillar of Heaven was a slab of night auraed by the sun. From it came shadow that washed over him and out to narrow a dark road across the lagoons and the lake and up the Sacred Wall.

Osidian was nowhere to be seen. Carnelian followed a trail of footprints to the water's edge. A few ripples creased the water's silk. He waited for a head to surface. He dipped his foot. He walked in, enjoying the coolness as it came up his legs. He allowed his knees to fold and sank. He swam as languidly as the fish, enjoying the weight of water on his limbs. He came out when he saw Osidian coming down to the shore. He seemed unnatural clothed.

'Have you bathed?' Carnelian said, rubbing the water off his skin.

Osidian gave him a nod.

'Why didn't you wake me?' Carnelian used Vulgate in an attempt to coax Osidian back into intimacy.

The day ahead will be best met with you fully rested,' Osidian replied, in Quya.

'Kiss me,' said Carnelian with a grin.

Osidian looked at him without emotion. He came closer, leaned towards him as if over a wall, touched a kiss to Carnelian's cheek. Carnelian watched him stand back, feeling how closed Osidian was to him, how dry his kiss. 'Is anything the matter?'

Osidian looked over his shoulder at the Pillar. 'Without paint we must return always in its shadow. Though it will ebb slowly we must still allow time to gather fruit.'

Keeping in the Pillar's shadow, they paddled across the lagoons, sometimes having to heave the raft over spits of mud. Eventually, the water began to crowd with water lilies. When they became dense enough to snare the raft, they abandoned it and wound off across the pads. The pools narrowed and clogged with reeds till they were mostly walking on land.

When they reached the wild orchards, Carnelian looked back. The Pillar's shadow had retreated from the Sacred Wall across the Skymere and was now defending the Ydenrim against the morning.

They wandered up through the terraces, plucking apples and pomegranates from the trees and slipping them into their packs. Hearing water, they found a stream that they followed until it brought them to the wall of the Forbidden Garden. They walked along this until they found a gate that Osidian opened with his key.

The jewelled colours of the garden were dulled by the Pillar's shadow. The terraces staircased up to its dark sky-seeking cliff. Barefoot, they wandered paths in the oppressive perfume exhaled by trumpet-throated lilies. Staircases of jasper and mirrored granite were ice under their feet. Carp hung their gold motionless in pools. Trees stood like mourners. Carnelian felt he was trespassing.

At last they found a pavilion through which water percolated in a thousand twisting rivulets that made the air humid and filled it with melancholy music.

'We must wait until the sun passes overhead,' said Osidian and laid himself out on a ledge so that Carnelian could hardly believe him not carved from its lifeless stone. He tried to wash away his loneliness with the sacrament of the feeling from the sound of rain. As the shivers coursed up and down his back he tried to focus on how with this ecstasy the Twins had brought into being all living things.

Osidian woke him wearing a solemn face. 'It is time.'

Carnelian watched him tearing strips from the hem of his purple cloak and winding them round his feet and hands. Osidian looked up. 'Do as I do. The sun will be at its highest. Exposed skin will taint instantly.'

Carnelian copied Osidian. When they were ready, they stood in the pavilion's door with the rain sounds behind them. Outside, the garden burned fiercely with hardly a shadow. They ran out into the sun-ray downpour. Soon they began to feel the heat through their hoods and through the silk shoulders of their cloaks. They moved quickly, stopping wherever they could find shade. The kitchen garden gave welcome relief along its narrow half-shaded paths. The garden's wall had to be climbed with some care. Several times, Carnelian winced as a sleeve fell away to reveal the blinding whiteness of his arm. The sun's scorch on it seemed to threaten a blistering burn.