David Zindell - The Wild

‘Tamara, Tamara,’ he said. He brushed his fingers lightly over her forehead. He touched her temples, her eyes, her cheek, the pulsing artery along her throat. While she stood very still, almost like a statue, he circled around her and cupped his hand over the hollow at the back of her neck. He stroked her long golden hair and touched her face, circling and looking at her deeply and always touching as if to make sure it was really she.

‘Danlo, Danlo,’ she replied at last, and her voice was dulcet and low, just as he remembered it. She pulled back to look at him and then smiled nicely. She had a lovely smile, wide and sparkling and open, although slightly too full of pride. He wondered why the outrages she had endured hadn’t tempered her terrible pride, but apparently the deeper parts of herself (and perhaps her surface happiness as well) remained untouched by her misfortunes. She seemed as sweet as he had known her at their first meeting, as warm and charming and full of life.

‘I … did not see you,’ he said. ‘When I came up the beach, I should have seen you standing by the window.’

‘Well, it’s dark in this room. Through the glass, darkly, the reflections – you couldn’t have seen very much.’

‘But I did not even think … to look inside the house.’

‘But how should you have? You’re not omniscient, you know.’

He smiled at this and said, ‘We used to joke that we were like magnets who could always sense each other’s presence.’

‘We did, didn’t we? Oh, yes – and once you said that when we were together, we completed something. A cosmic field of joy, of love, like a magnetic field – I the south pole and you the north. I think you’re the most romantic man I’ve ever known.’

Danlo stood close to her holding both her hands between his. He looked deeply into her eyes and said, ‘You … remember this?’

She nodded her head then smiled. ‘I have so much to tell you. So much has happened and I–’

‘But how did you come to be here? In this house, on this planet, now, here – how is this possible?’

‘Please,’ she said, ‘It’s cold in this room – would you mind if we light a fire before we talk? I’ve always loathed being cold.’

While Danlo stacked a few logs on the grate inside the fireplace, Tamara went into the kitchen to prepare a pot of tea. She was familiar with the house, of course, much more familiar than he. It did not take her long to return carrying a tray laden with a teapot, honey bowl, silver spoons and two little blue cups. She set the tray down before the blazing fire that Danlo had lit, then pulled up two cushions and set them on the hard wooden floor in front of the fireplace, one cushion on either side of the tea service. Because the meditation room was heating up rather quickly, she removed her travelling robe and sat on one of the cushions. She invited Danlo to do the same. In this way, sitting crosslegged on the soft cushions with the tea service between them, they could look into each other’s eyes as the fire warmed the sides of their faces.

‘You must know I left Neverness,’ she said. She took in a breath of air and then hesitated a moment as if she was unsure of herself, or perhaps unsure of what she could allow herself to tell him. ‘After our last meeting, I couldn’t bear being in a city where I had so many memories – and where so many of the memories most important to me were gone. The truth is, I think I was afraid of meeting you somewhere, on the street or buying a plate of kurmash or even skating circles at one of the ice rings. I’m sorry, Danlo. You must know why it was impossible for me to see you. You’d been so much a part of my old life, before the fever burned my memories away – but my old life was gone. I had to have a new life. To make a new life somewhere other than Neverness. Sometimes, after I realized what I’d lost when I lost you, I wanted to die. But even more, I suppose, I wanted to live. To love, to live – and live and live and live until I was myself again. Oh, I don’t mean I hoped I could get my memories back. I never hoped that. But my sanity, my soul – I had to remember who I really was, if I remembered anything. I was afraid I’d lost my soul, don’t you see? So I left Neverness to find it. That sounds so romantic, I know. So vain. Because you can never lose your soul. It’s always there if you look deeply enough. The love. The life. Even the memories, too – they’re always there, waiting, like pearls in a dark drawer. You were right, after all. The master remembrancers were right, too. It’s so strange that I had to leave Neverness to learn that. It’s so strange how my life led me here, halfway across the galaxy, to you. I never thought I’d see you again. I never thought I’d love you again, I never dared hope that. But love, to love and love without restraint, to be loved – it’s what we were born for, don’t you think? It’s what I was born for, Danlo. I never really doubted that.’

While Tamara poured the golden peppermint tea into their cups, Danlo listened. He did not interrupt or try to correct her when she ascribed her memory loss to the Catavan Fever. He had never told of his discovery that it was Hanuman li Tosh who had really destroyed her memories, not some manufactured mind virus from Catava. He decided not to tell her now. This was her time for telling, not his. And so he sat straight and quiet on his cotton cushion, sipping sweet tea from a little blue cup. He listened to her tell of her journey from Neverness to Avalon and then on to Larondissement, Simoom, Sum-merworld and Urradeth, where she had nearly lost herself in one of the arhats’ famous meditation schools. Finally, she said, she had made her way to Solsken, that bright and happy planet which lies near the end of the Fallaways. Of all the Civilized Worlds, Solsken is the nearest the galactic core, just as Farfara is the farthest. The stars in the night sky of Solsken are as dense and brilliant as grains of sand along a tropical beach, which is perhaps why the men and women of Solsken worship the night as do no other people. On Solsken, during the season called Midsummer’s Dream, there are always festivals and religious rites lasting from dusk until dawn. And there is always a need for musicians to beat the drums and play the flutes and pluck the strings of the gosharps which sanctify the Dance of the Night. Tamara, of course, in her training as a courtesan had gained proficiency with many musical instruments. In fact, she had played with some of the best harpists in Neverness: with Zohra Iviatsui, Ramona Chu and once, even with the great Ivaranan. Although her talent for sexual ecstasy had vanished with the rape of her memories, strangely her musical gifts had only deepened. And so the exemplars and ritual masters of Solsken were very glad to have such an accomplished woman play for them, and Tamara spent many nights singing the holy songs, using her perfect golden voice as a precise instrument that vibrated through the sacred groves and resonated-with the strings of the great golden gosharps. In this way, she sang to her lost soul, and with her voice alone plucked the ten thousand strings and made an unearthly music – the mystic chords of the sacred canticles which the faithful believed to be perfectly tuned to the wavelengths of starlight falling over the world. She might have spent the rest of her life there beneath the brilliant stars of Solsken, dancing and remembering and singing her sad, beautiful songs. But then one night, during the Night of the Long Dance, a man dressed all in grey had come out of the multitudes on the hillside and approached her. His name was Sivan wi Mawi Sarkis-sian, and he said that he had been sent to find her.

‘I can’t tell you how surprised I was,’ Tamara said as she stirred a tiny spoonful of honey into her second cup of tea. She would have preferred adding more, much more, but she avoided sweets the way a speed skater might potholes in the ice. ‘I had told no one my travel plans. Before I began my journey, I didn’t know them myself. I never dreamed I’d come to Solsken – that was something of an accident. Or a miracle – I’m not sure which. Oh, I do know, really, but this is hard to say. You see, I’ve come to believe in miracles. I’ve had to. It’s a miracle, I think, when a goddess takes pity on a soul-sick woman and promises to heal her.’