Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

“I don’t know about you,” Rhiow said, “but I’m ready for my nap.” She glanced idly over the others, but not too closely, all too aware of the sorrow or pity they were keeping from showing in their eyes, and unwilling to see it surface to everyone’s embarrassment. “Hwaith?” she said, turning to him. “A last debrief?”

“Of course,” he said.

And the two of them walked down the hall to the guest bedroom, tails high, as if everything was fine.

They were, after all, People.

Much later, in the guest bedroom, Rhiow was lying on the broad windowsill, looking out into the dark: and Hwaith was beside her, sprawled, snoring gently.

It was all over; over at last. Yet now there was something that wasn’t over. Or over before it’s fairly begun…

Rhiow looked out the window into the street, where in other houses lights were ablaze as people picked up after the quake. To think, she thought, that I sat there telling the story of Aifheh and Sehau so casually. How did I never see that this was coming for me?

Yet now that she did, she felt unable to know how to react, like some Person who’s never seen traffic before and freezes in the middle of the road when she sees the first headlights. I’m caught in something that sounds just like a Middle Lives tale for the Two of them, Rhiow thought. For there were endless variations of the basic story, regional variations, some of them even verging on the comedic – since when the Two began playing sa’Rrahh’s ugly Play back at her, humor was unquestionably part of the strand.

Then why doesn’t this feel funny, Rhiow thought. After tomorrow morning – this morning! – we won’t see each other again. The Powers don’t permit casual commuting between the past and the future: there’s too much chance of one contaminating the other. So forget about that.

And as for other possible remedies… Rhiow’s tail lashed. Our times are too far apart. Even if Hwaith wanted to stay for me, tried to stay for me, as Sehau did for Aifheh… The distance in moons is just too far. No one could do it. The winds at the edge of Life would sweep any Person-to-be over the border into Itself eventually. And even if he had more lives to spend, and every one of them should last as long as it possibly could before the body breaks down at last… he still couldn’t do it. The time between us is just too wide.

And why would he want to do it? He met me three days ago, as his time goes! He can’t possibly know what he wants in so short a time.

Though he says he does…

Impossible as that seemed, perhaps he did. If so, it just made the story worse, especially as she was herself trapped right in the middle of the tragedy of it, and was understanding its issues better than she ever had. So very unconcerned she’d been about the tale in past years: one more legend, one more part of an educated Person’s knowledge – and nothing to do with her, since she was long ago safely spayed. But now the reality had her by the scruff indeed, and though she might kick and yowl as she liked, there was no escaping it.

And possibly the worst aspect of the whole situation was that even with this sudden unseasonable longing rearing up inside her, there was nothing Rhiow could do about it. No kittens for you, she thought. Not even wizardry could grow back a womb for them to kindle in now: your body’s become too used to the way things have been for all these years. It would quickly reject any attempt to clone new material from neighboring tissue. And the ovaries were gone too: so no chance ever again to experience the ecstasies of heat, the mad hormone-driven flirtations, the chase and the always-intended capture, the hot flush of satisfaction after fulfillment. And to think how I teased Siffha’h about this. Well, that’s come back to bite me hard now.

Rhiow squeezed her eyes shut and crouched there in the dark for a long time.

Dear Queen about us, what do I do?!

No answer. But that was the problem with serving a deity who was also a Person. Independence, the right to make one’s own choice no matter how far down the scale of power you were, was always a given. In the legend, everything had rested on sa’Rraah’s freedom to come and go, and Her casual choice an aeon ago to wander back to the much-missed Hearth and taunt Queen Iau one more time. Without that freedom, there would be no tenth life, no chance for immortality.

And we have no way to be sure of that chance, Rhiow thought, miserable in the darkness, shivering with anguish. There’s no way to tell if it that last Life will ever be offered, or even achieved, no matter how hard you strive for it. Like wizardry itself, it comes or it doesn’t… and that’s just the way things are.

Rhiow lay there, feeling the claw in her heart, and knew whose it was. Even after everything that’s happened, she said to sa’Rraah, you’re not off my case, are you?

After what you and I have just been through, said the Lone Power, what would you expect? How should I allow a mortal to put me through such indignity without suffering for it?And anyway… this was all about putting things back to the way they usually are. Now you will have your wish. Make the best of it.

She fell silent.

“Rhiow…”

He stretched, looking at her, the bronzy eyes pale in the reflected glow from the streetlights outside.

“For the Queen’s sake don’t apologize,” she said.

“I wasn’t planning to. I’m done with that. The way things are… is the way things are.”

She bent down and rubbed his face against his: but then she had to stop.

“Will you stay a little while longer?” he said. “Just another day or two – “

“I can’t,” Rhiow said. “You know I can’t. It’s not just the issue of the timeslide, and the buildup of the effects of being out of my right time – though that’s part of it. If I stay longer, it’s just going to be harder for both of us. We should take pity on each other and end it now.”

He sighed. “She does love her little vengeances,” Hwaith said, “doesn’t she.”

“Yes she does,” Rhiow said, and looked away from Hwaith, finding it difficult to bear the pain in his eyes, which he was trying to manage for her sake.

“Well then,” Hwaith said. “It’ll just have to be another life, then.”

“So it seems,” Rhiow said, doing her best to sound cheerful.

“All right,” Hwaith said. “Then let’s cuddle.”

She fell asleep on the windowsill as she had never fallen asleep with another Person: with one of Hwaith’s forelegs thrown over her, protective, something she’d seen Arhu and Sif do. At first she found it hard to bear. Then Rhiow put her own foreleg over his and hugged it to her. This is going to have to last, she said. There’s always memory, at least.

It was cold comfort. But sometimes, after saving the world, that was all you had left.

Dawn came too soon. Two hours later came too soon.

But two hours later they were all standing outside the Observatory as the sun looked over the low mountains to the east, and struck fire from the sundial by the white obelisk. It was still too early for ehhif tourists — not that there were likely to be any here this morning, considering what the night before had been like – and the worldgate lay out on the terrace again, just by itself now and not enclosed in any unnecessary spell-structure.

“I set it up for Grand Central in our time,” Aufwi said: “easier to drop everyone in the same place when there’s a timeslide hooked into the weave. The track 33 off-hours access area, an hour after you left the original uptime coordinates be all right for everybody?”

“Fine,” Rhiow heard Urruah say. It was not fine with her: nothing seemed fine at the moment. She stood off to one side with Hwaith, looking at the gate, even though there was nothing she wanted to look at less – except perhaps Hwaith’s eyes.