He brushed aside her defense. “All the same, you replaced me! And with a brute. I’m not at all pleased.”
“You weren’t at all here,” she countered, growing angry. “For all I knew, you had found someone else and weren’t coming back.”
Meersh’s penis stood up and said to him, “She’s right, you know, and hardly far off the mark. Best you’d be contrite.”
Meersh, who had in fact dallied with too many to count, changed tack. “Well, I’m back for now so we must all get along, mustn’t we? What is this hard fellow’s name?”
“I don’t know. He never speaks.” She refrained from telling him how the stone man had come to life, but Penis whispered, “Look at the size of that!” Meersh knew what Penis was looking at.
“You probably just don’t know how to talk to him,” he said. “I have traveled so widely that I know how to speak to anybody. If you’d but asked I would have shown you.”
She marveled at his ability to deny his absence while proclaiming his skill, and only shook her head at the hopelessness of arguing with one for whom reality had no permanent shape.
Meersh unloaded his pack. As always it was full of games, and he drew these out and set them aside—boards and playing pieces, markers of various sorts. From the bottom of it he produced three multicolored, polished pebbles no bigger than his thumb. He held one to his ear and nodded to himself. He pressed that pebble to the stone figure’s face where its mouth should have been. Around the pebble a gap formed, spreading to either side of it. Abruptly, the stone man gave a sucking sound, drawing his first breath, the pebble disappeared into the gap, and Meersh snatched his fingers back before they vanished, too. “There, it’s really very simple,” he said.
“It’s really very simple,” parroted the rock man. His voice creaked and clacked—the sound of stone grinding on stone.
Then Meersh took the two remaining stones and pressed them with his thumbs into the hollows where the Stone Man’s eyes might have been. When he drew his thumbs away, the stones remained, like bright irises embedded in the deep sockets. The pebbles shifted as the stone figure looked from Meersh to Akonadi.
To her, Meersh said, “I know where you found him. There’s enchantment in those isles. I’ve seen it before.” He addressed the Stone Man then. “Hereafter, you can speak, and I’m going to make use of your newfound talent.”
“What do you mean, husband?” Akonadi asked.
“On Valdemir they need a sun god, and I need someone who will nominate me. It’s never a good idea to nominate yourself. It looks suspicious.” He patted the Stone Man’s shoulder.
“And why should he do that for you?” she asked.
“Because he’s in my debt. I’ve given him a voice and much improved his eyesight. Once I’m sun god, who knows what I might do for him? And for you, as well, wife. I’m sure I’ll be a benign sun god.” And he wandered off, contemplating how he would transform Taprobane once he had become a god, and how he would sleep when he wanted to and eat what he wanted to, and no one could gainsay him.
The Stone Man waited until Meersh was out of earshot, then said, “I will do this for him because I am in his debt, but I can tell you, no good will come of it.”
“None ever does,” she said, and was about to turn away when he touched her, a delicate touch for one so huge and seemingly brutish.
He whispered her name then, and the sound came from deep within him. It was thick with all that he felt, that until then he had not been able to express. All he said was “Akonadi,” but the syllables thrummed with the desire all women want to hear when their lover speaks their name, and she embraced him and remained there.
The Stone Man learned his lines. He knew what Meersh wanted and didn’t care. To him such cupidity meant nothing.
At the palace of Valdemir there were hundreds of petitioners on hand in the great hall. Most stood in a circle around the few seats, which had been taken early; and most stood with their backs to the center, as if they were interested in the architecture of the palace. It was impressive: Glass panels decorated the walls and ceiling of the hall. The eastern side, lined with slender columns, became an open balcony overlooking the ocean.