#89 - Shave

In the water rooms, there were barber chairs.  Both for having someone shave you and shaving one’s self.  Those were kneeling chairs with horrible little mirrors, though recently someone had replaced them with the new, smoothly silvered and coppered ones that were being made out of float glass.

Ahrimaz dried himself off completely, tying his damp hair back, avoided those chairs.  He stood in the alcove with the other kind of chair, dithering whether he could make himself sit down.  My hair is long enough to choke me, my beard I can grab with both hands and have it come through my fingers.  I don’t like the weeds on my face.  I don’t like the scraggly hair-ends.

Once the old man’s funeral was finished and the handfuls of hair he’d flung onto the pyre had grown back, he’d decreed that mourning wigs were no longer fashionable. A generation ago Great Grandfather had lost all his hair and powdered wigs had been fashionable.  As far as Ahrimaz was concerned, they itched.  They were also home to lice and other bugs, stank no matter how much perfume you used and were utterly useless under a helmet, in fact they were downright dangerous on the battlefield.

Everyone knew the story of how Sen-Grand Guyard de Haute’s peruke had slid down between his gorget and his breastplate, gotten hung up there and as he fought he’d inhaled enough hair that he choked upon it.  It was a funny children’s story now because he’d won the battle but didn’t live to accept his opponent’s surrender.

“You can sit, Ahrimaz,” Rutçyen said.  She and Pel were both there and, as usual, managed to walk in without him hearing them.  You would think I’d be able to anticipate this, by now, he chided himself.

He sat down and leaned back in the chair, carefully tipping his head back.  “You want me to trim it?  Or take it down to the skin?” She asked, cheerfully washing her hands.  She had obviously just dismissed a sword class because she was still armed.

“Why don’t you use that,” he nodded at her belt.  “To give me a trim… oh about here?”  He indicated shoulder height and she snorted.

“I could but I don’t generally help my students kill themselves.”

“You keep saying that and then steal our breath every class.”  He smiled, safely hidden behind the beard, still.

“You only feel like you’re dying,” she teased.  “Not for real.” Pel had a carved brain-wood shaving case just open, pulled out a beautiful horn-handled razor.  The soap cup and the lotion bottle were both Yhom blue crystalware, the brush was boar’shair with a polished white-nut handle.

“Don’t tell me that was his…”  Ahrimaz made to sit up but found himself held down with a light touch on his shoulder from Rutaçyen.

“No,” Pel said.  “This was made just for you.”

“What?  I have no… I mean… why?”

“Because I thought you might want it soon.”

“But…”

“Shush now,” Rutçyen said, unfolding one of the hot towels she’d just fetched from the shelf, wrapping it around his face, giving him more darkness to hide behind.  He tensed up until he realized she was careful and left him sufficient and comfortable breathing room.  Of course she would.  She’s as good as my personal barber, in that world.  His heart hammered in his chest as someone took up the length of his hair and began combing it out.

She changed the towels three times and his hair was now being brushed, by Pel, with a luxurious bristle brush that soothed his cramped scalp.  “You needn’t say anything else, but you never said, short or shave, just one word to answer the question.”

“Sh…sh…shave,” he managed to say as the cooler air hit his tingling skin.  He couldn’t focus on one thing, hair or face and behind closed eyes he was almost forced to relax.

The clink of soap being foamed up in the bowl, the oiled hands massaging his face with long, slow circles, through the beard, gentle over the cheekbones and eyes and up into his hair, strong kneading fingers on his scalp.  He was suddenly limp and his mouth opened slightly.  Relaxed.

Clipping noises, more hair brushing.  Then smooth, gentle tugging as the long hair on his chin was trimmed down to where it could be shaved.  The scent of vanilla.  Then lemon, from the elephant’s orangery, as the warm foam swirled into his cheeks in even circles, lathered onto his face and neck.  It was nearly impossible to be afraid, even with his neck exposed to the gentle, firm gliding pull that he knew had to be the razor.

#88 - Willing to Uncover His Face

The rumble of the work on the House of the Hand reached even down into the water rooms.  All of Inné was taken with the novelty of gun cotton and in the old quarry, it was suddenly creating all kinds of stone for building use, and just north of the city someone had discovered a whole new seam of hard coal that the gun cotton just opened up to everyone’s use.  People were starting to call it Ahrimaz’s Fire or Aeono’s Fluff.

Ahrimaz sat in the hottest pool in the water rooms up to his chin, beard soaking in the steaming water, watching the occasional ripples jiggle through what would normally have been a still pool, and flinched, imagining the explosion so far away.

Didara said she and Jagunjagun heard it as a basso chirrup and then a roll as if the earth were drumming.  Mostly pleasant.  

Sure put her muzzle on top of his head and hung her paws in the water on either side treating him as though his head were a harder bolster on the edge of a pond.  She licked her dewlaps and Ahrimaz snorted at the sensation and noise and went under.

The dog managed not to fall on him but looked very affronted when he re-surfaced, spitting sulphury water at her.

Ahrimaz was clean but he knew that if he got out of the water all the feelings, the pressure, the tears he could feel like a band around his head and chewing all along the backs of his cheekbones, would come pouring out.  He had no energy to bear that.  He sank down again, holding his breath, watching the water grow still, releasing a bubble or two to fly up and become part of his underwater sky.

His lungs were screaming at him by now and he ignored that pain.  It was tiny compared to what he was used to.  But he knew, just as he’d known for the girl, that it was not his time to drown, so he pushed up, bursting out of the water, startling the dogs and landed sitting on the edge.

“I was starting to wonder if I should interrupt,” Pelahir’s voice went from muffled to clear as the water ran out of Ahrimaz’s ears.  “So, Shit-Head,” he asked.  “How are you doing?”

Ahrimaz shrugged, tilting his head away from the Cylak man as he settled next to him, naked.  He’s beautiful and my scorching dick is noticing.  “Aside from wanting to have sex with you,” Ahrimaz said, “I’m fine.”

“Ah.” Pel slid into the water and then burst out, back up onto the edge almost in one motion.  He’d washed clean before coming to soak and water glistened on ever hair.  He smiled.  “I’m a little bristly and I don’t think I’m up for the kind of sex you want. Sorry.”

Ahrimaz nodded abruptly.  He still couldn’t manage to come without some pain being involved.  Either his or someone else’s.  His hand scratched idly at his chin, tangled in the hair, then knotted in it. He turned to Pel.  “I’d like to borrow your razor.”

“I can get you a new one.  Mine’s due for replacing.  You keep pulling on it like that and you'll likely pull your face off." He paused a moment.  "As long as you’re only planning to cut hair with it.”

“Only hair.  I swear…” he stopped, feeling the shape of his face under the full beard.  “You’ve been keeping mirrors away from me, on Limyé’s orders haven’t you?”

“Yes, we have.  You might have noticed the space in your room where it used to stand.”

“I… I’m not sure I’d be safe with my own hand on a razor and seeing this face.”  He waved a hand in front of it.

Pel didn’t answer but just sat silent for a while.  “A barber?”

“No.”

More watery, echoing silence.  “Would you trust my hand? Or Yolend?  Or Limyé?”  Pel was apparently as interested in having sex as Ahrimaz was, by the way his penis stood hard in the nest of his pubic hair.  Ahrimaz tore his eyes away, turning away from Pel.  His skin felt too hot, too inflamed.  As if Aeono would burst through if Ahrimaz lost control of anything.  He held his breath.

Pel waited until Ahrimaz gasped, then held out a glass of water, with cold beads running down it in this steamy atmosphere.

He took it, managed a sip, then a gulp, before draining the glass – not precisely dry – but empty, at the least.  “Ru… Rutaçyen, I think,” he managed to stammer.  “Ink sword hand, sword hand… good with a razor.”

“Good choice.  I'm glad to see you willing to uncover your face, come out of hiding."  He grinned.  "I actually have a freshly sharpened razor for you.” He threw a towel around his loins, to Ahrimaz’s exhaled relief, and threw a cheerful, “I’ll be right back,” over his shoulder.

#87 - Peace Is No Longer An Assault

Ahrimaz gazed around the bedroom, his bedroom and realized he hadn’t been outside the building in several days.  They were finally leaving him alone with his thoughts more and more, since Limyé had noted his forearm scars were finally healed up enough to be heavy callus rather than weeping sores with bite-mark edges.  Every bath now they where easing, flaking off, being rubbed away with soap and hot water and a scrubbing cloth. 

He was no longer attacking himself, at least physically, and so the watch on him was less.  The weather was full-on spring and he found he could bear all this verdancy.  In fact he quite liked it.  He needed to go out, to where he’d found some kind of solace from the old monster, even if it was supposed to be hunting ground.  The old man had wanted blood spilled in the Vale, to ‘keep the witches out’, had torn down the ribbons that kept appearing on the massive old tree at the entrance.

The Emperor had, a generation ago, cut that apple tree down.  An oak on the other side of the path, he’d left and it had grown huge.  And the apple had come back from the roots, as if it were recovering from a natural disaster instead of from deliberate attack.

In this world an ice storm had shattered the tree and it had also come back, nearly identical to the one in his own world.

His hand hovered over the priest’s robe for a moment, then he grabbed the plain cotton training clothes, soft from all the washing.  Barefoot, he walked out past the massive building project at the front, rebuilding the polity’s hall.  It would look even more like the entrance to the House of Gold in his world when it was finished, but he said nothing about it.

The other enormous building project they were taking on was installing the first massive sheets of float-glass windows, both in the entrance and all along the Elephant Ambassadors hall, showing the lush and luxuriant garden within, and letting in much more light to the great good benefit of both the plants and the ambassadors.

Jagunjagun was paying for these extravagant windows travelling all around central Inné doing song instructions describing his home.  He had found himself uncomfortable doing this at first, but Didara only did the ones in Innéthel itself, as her pregnancy progressed, and her exercise became a series of specific walk arounds to not overtax herself.  Ahrimaz had insisted and Jagunjagun had supported him, much to her disgruntlement.

The glue and the stench of metal-work stung his nose, the thock of mallets on wood, and the harsher ring of hammer on metal and anvil tumbled through his ears but somehow didn’t manage to exacerbate the howling under his skin.  People’s shouting direction to one another had nothing to do with him, nothing he was responsible for, however much he’d given them ideas dragged out of another world.  It was similar enough an existence that any other Innéan could have thought the same things.

The yellow brick was warm under his feet and he felt curiously isolated, safely insulated somehow, from the business all around him.  The family were all busy, every one, and he could finally draw breath without someone else standing close enough to inhale what he exhaled.

He turned away from the plaza and went up the hill, the wide brick path shrinking as he distanced himself from the noise and mess of other people’s lives, realizing that he carried the noise and mess of his own life contained in himself.  The roaring in his head, the shrieking in his veins, the readiness to fight or flee or endure all ticking and pulsing and quivering just under his skin.

It was surprising how much he’d controlled it, really.  It was still consuming him but not as much as it used to.  Limyé had pointed out how much the Empire constrained him in the shape he’d been hammered into.  Another reason he hurt.  It was like unclenching a tight-held fist.

The trees at the entrance to the Vale were in full leaf and the apple was in full flower, the lower branches festooned with ribbons drifting in the wind and empty wicker cages, the birds released to Her glory cheeping and singing and screeching and chattering all the way to the waterfalls.

Ahrimaz nodded at the priest scattering cracked corn for the ground feeders and to the priestess raking the path.  A young acolyte, high in the tree, tiny to not disturb the fragile old branches, removed the oldest cages so they not foul the trees growth.  They all smiled at him and he found his own mouth stretching in that strangest of grimaces, an open smile at another person.

He didn’t have to fear them. He didn’t have to make them obey him.  He didn’t have to hurt them.

He found that his father had taught him to try and force people to fill the aching void in his chest. It was possible to fill himself up with passion, and pain, but simple connection was somehow far more satisfying.  Where before he’d thought it insipid, too weak, too superficial, it now felt far deeper than any connection he’d ever had before.

He was mourning the loss of pain, he knew; mourning the loss of all the strong and violent emotions in his life, he’d been taught were the only constant companions.  Limyé and he had talked about it, for far longer than he wished to remember, thinking that the time was being wasted.  That pain and violence and anger and fear were all like separate relationships and he would have to let all of them go.  

“Break up with them, as it were,” Limyé had said.  “Not necessarily a widower to them because they are not dead to you.  If you need them, as a warrior, they will always be there.  But you will need to conscript them.”

“For a pacifist you talk quite a bit about war.”

“I’ve studied the trauma of warriors all my career as a healer.  Why do you think I was Ahrimaz’s personal physician?”

“I see.”

Didara sounded a lot like Limyé and Ahrimaz had no wish to inflict and project his healing flames to her new baby, so rather than sit in her armpit and talk, he came up here more.

The platform near the highest Veil waterfall was empty, the pool below a froth of white and green.  He settled to his knees and lost himself in the roar of the water, the touch of the wind, the occasional spray upon his face, even the odd green or fishy smell kicked up by the falling water.  When he’d first sat here the peace had both reminded him of when he was a child, hiding from hell, and later like an assault on his bulwark of horror.

Now it just was. And he was able to be in it, without quivering or running or shouting at it.  People moved along the paths and drifted in and out of his perception as he knelt.

Then, sharp as knife in the guts, came a silent wail of despair that Ahrimaz knew all too well, for having lived it this past year.  He shot to his feet, the sharp whistle of alarm bursting past his fingers that would call the healers and other priestesses and priests. His hand rose to join the other and Ahrimaz, the Emperor, dove into the foam of the Veil, hands sweeping for the body he knew had to be there.

The attempted sacred suicides had dropped off once the weather had changed but people still despaired of their lives.

The water smashed Ahrimaz down to the bottom and there, clinging to the smooth stones, was the one trying to inhale the Goddess’s essence and drown.  His fingers clenched in hair and clothing, he planted his feet on the stones, shoving them both to the surface, away from the hammer of falling water.

Ahrimaz looked down into the clenched shut eyes of the young woman he’d hauled out, weeping invisible in the water pouring off her face, hair tangled across, clenched in his fist as he kept her in the air.  He shook her slightly. “Breathe, woman.  You are still needed in this life, in this place.  The Goddess Liryen says so.” He knew it, in his bones.  There was no uncertainty in him.  This young woman's time to die was not now. 

And then the others were there, splashing out to take this troublesome, hurting child out of his hands.  He wasn’t sure what he would be able to do if someone didn’t come and take them away.  He wasn’t a healer.

He sloshed over to boulders at the edge and sat down to catch his own breath.  A towel appeared for him… a dry robe.  He managed at nod at the priest who brought them silently.  It was understood that if you hauled someone away from death you would be the first to speak afterwards.

It was a slightly muddy scramble back up to the platform, since the stone steps were wet and his feet were still covered in algae and muck.  He pulled off his wet clothing and began rubbing his hair dry, sitting naked in the sun.   

The High priestess Mara nodded at him, from her own mediation spot and he began laughing as he took up the priest’s robe.  “Even if I don’t start by wearing this, You’ll have me in them by the end of the day, somehow, hmmm, Liryen?”

#86 - Pain Has Always Been an Old Friend

I sit in the middle of this room, this green room, painted by my younger, other self, and rock.  I feel safe here.  That raises my anxiety for some reason.  Growing up there never was a place that was safe.  The old monster could burst in at any time, send a servant, send a guard, send the mother to fetch us, drag us out of safety.

Here no one ever does.  They knock.  The only creatures who have free access to me are the animals, and now, the baby who doesn’t know any better.  I know he’s here because he’s climbed onto my shoulders and is bouncing. What sane person would leave a baby with me?

I unfold and he slides down into my arms and my lap.  If I were on the bed or sitting properly on a chair or the couch he wouldn’t be so forward, I think, but then laugh at myself.  I’m joking.  This child would thrust himself into the mouth of the tiger if he wanted to pet the big kitty.

I examine him again, as though I’ve never seen him before, as he examines me, his fists knotted in my beard.  It is getting long and I’m actually considering shaving it off.  They know I’m not him. It’s just a matter of convincing me that I am not becoming him.

The baby pushes against my chest and I run a finger over his misty, nearly non-existant eyebrows, and then over my own and he giggles.  I touch his nose and find my mouth falling open in an open grin.  You would think I was happy.  He copies me and then shrieks.

A knock at my door and Yolend calls “Ahrimaz is he in there with you again?”

“Yes, and his puppy has piddled on the floor again.” These people give their children dogs young.

She laughs.  “I have a page to clean it up.”

I rise and step over the mess, scoop up the little vermin and manage to open the door without dropping either baby or puppy.

She knows dogs.  The page rushes in with a couple of lidded buckets and a rag, swish up the puddle off the stone floor, dampen the rag with the hot water and soap in the other and give the stone a scrub and a wipe.  All while I’m standing there, looking into her eyes.  She is not my wife.  I miss her. I miss the woman I’m allowed to love.  I miss her.  I owe her.  I load the boy and the dog into her arms and as the page skitters out with the messy pails, I touch her arm.  “Wait, please.” 

She pauses and I don’t know what I wanted to say… at last I manage to open my mouth to talk to the ice bitch Goddess’s priestess wife… um to Yolend… “Next time… next time we spar would you obliged me by trying to land a bruise here?”  I touch my left cheek.  She smiles at me which makes me want to slap the expression off her face because I know how she will answer.

“Sorry, Ahrimaz, but no.  That would violate the salle rules and Rutaçyen would have me do  several hundred pull ups if I actually tried to injure you.  And you would be doing the same for not blocking and inviting the injury.”  She blocks the baby from snatching at her head band and with the child’s fist safely in her hand looks at me intently.  “I do not owe you bruises or scars.  SHE does.”

I nod and step back.  I am so enraged I almost cannot see her even as I close the door softly.  I wait till I hear her walk away, before sinking down on the floor and rocking again.  I can feel the hardness and slight dampness of the floor under me, the verdant breeze from the window.  I feel the press of my forearm scars around my raised knees.

I will not bite.  I do not deserve pain.  She is right.  What am I afraid of?

I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t… I’m afraid that I’m not hurting enough.  That someone is going to show up and make me hurt as much as I’m supposed to.

I and pain are such old friends I don’t want to let it go.  It’s too easy to just let it go, let it be.  It’s too soft.  It’s not right that life should just be easy.  Pain… where are you?  Why are you leaving me too?

Ah.  There.  Pain has always been there.  Now I am feeling bereft of one more thing.  But… what good does my pain do?  It has always been there… almost.  There was a time before pain but my life was arranged so that the only constant, the only unfailing rock under everything in my life, was Pain.

They want Pain to leave me too.