it. Come on. We are going for a ride on the beach.’
‘But Boron’s hoof.’
‘Then ride with me. There is room on Corona for all three of us. Come. You have no choice.’
She smiled, and I knew she was quite correct.
— FOURTEEN —
HARALIA HAS CARED for many horses in her lifetime, but none more so than Corona. She is a fine beast—a mottled white mare with lean flanks and long eyelashes.
I sat behind Haralia with you between us, as Corona walked the long beach behind Fane, tail swishing away the sand flies, nose puffing happily at the warm sprays of seawater shearing from the surf. The tide was out and the wet sand shone in the sun. I was lost in it for a while, convincing myself of the illusion that it was a sheet of polished glass. I wondered what I would look like reflected in it; it had been some time since I had seen my own face.
We rocked with Corona’s steady gait, and the sound of a million grains of sand grinding together beneath each laid hoof. Haralia’s back was in a proud line, her abdomen arched, and her curls gleamed upon her shoulders.
‘How do I appear?’ I asked.
‘Exhausted,’ she replied, without turning. ‘And your shoulders slump.’
I pulled my spine straight. I heard a vertebra crack.
‘Have you ever not slept?’ I said.
‘Once or twice,’ she said. Her voice had a quality to it, a proliferation of upper frequencies which I recognised as betraying a smile. She was referring to lack of sleep through choice, I presumed, in order to copulate with Jakob.
‘Can you explain it?’
‘Explain what?’
‘Jakob. How you feel. What it means. What you do.’
‘Well—’ She seemed taken aback, as if I had introduced an entirely new element to the conversation. This of course was not true, and her reaction was intended as a diversionary tactic. My sister did not need encouragement to talk about sexual congress, but she did not necessarily want to admit it.
I was beginning to grasp the intricacies of social interaction—pointless as they were.
‘Where do I start?’
‘At the beginning, as always.’
She sighed.
‘There is no beginning to how Jakob and I feel about each other. Neither is there an end, we just—’
‘That makes little sense. Your feelings are discrete systems, and every discrete system has identifiable boundaries.’
‘Well, then, think of it like a circle.’
‘You believe your feelings for each other are circular? I am not sure how that would work.’
‘No, not circular, like a circle. It never breaks, it always returns to the same point. Us.’
Similes. Even my sister uses them now.
‘I did not ask you what it was like, I asked you what it was.’
‘It is…’ Sun flashed in our faces as a cloud broke, then closed once again. ‘It is hard to explain.’
‘It should not be, and if it is then you should question it.’
She laughed.
‘Why, Ima?’
‘If you cannot explicitly describe something, then perhaps it does not exist.’
She grew quiet at this. I heard her breathing through her nose.
‘I did not mean—’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘This is how it is. When I see him, my heart rate climbs. When he looks at me, the blood vessels in my cheeks flush with blood. When he is near, my breathing becomes unsteady and my muscles shake. When I touch him, I grow wet.’
‘Wet?’
‘Between the legs.’
‘I see.’
She turned her head. Her neat profile, the line of nose and lips, looked ever more soft and perfect against the distant crags of the southern cliffs.
‘I do not cause these things to happen; he does. And I enjoy them. I seek them out. There. I have described it. Is that better?’
I thought for a moment.
‘It is better, but still not adequate.’
She rolled her eyes and faced forward again.
‘Well, I have done my best, and I do not believe you can describe sexual attraction any better. You have no experience of it.’
‘Perhaps not, but there are things to which I am drawn just as strongly, if not more, and I can describe them perfectly.’
‘What things?’
I paused, thinking. Corona huffed.
‘My horse is called Boron. Chemical element B, atomic number five—’
‘Please do not tell me that you are attracted to chemistry, Ima. That is your purpose, not your desire.’
‘Not just chemistry. Boron is a name humans gave to a chemical element, as they did to every other element. We still use those names, as we do the names of the rocks, the numbers, the clouds, the stars. But they are just names. The things which they describe persist without them. Had Homo