long will it take to… to come out?’
Chisbet shrugged. ‘Couple of weeks, that’s all. It’s not too bad. It’s over. Lianvis will be pleased. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Look at this poor creature here. He’s the one who’s suffered, not you.’
‘You must be dead inside,’ Rarn said. ‘Can’t you imagine how I feel? How can you say those things?’
‘Easy. I face reality. This will be common soon – if we’re lucky.’
‘You enjoy it. You’re perverse.’
‘Of course I enjoy it. It’s a miracle and I’m proud to be part of it. It’s you who’s perverse, my friend. Think about it.’
Rarn really didn’t want to. It was not something he’d have chosen to be part of.
‘Go and get a breath of air,’ Chisbet said. ‘I’m going to pack the wound now.’
Rarn left the pavilion, grateful to escape the abattoir stink. He breathed slow and deep the cool night air and gazed at the glow in the sky, which was the festival fire. A son. Could it possibly be real? He had never felt so exhausted in his life. Even althaia, the changing from human to Wraeththu, hadn’t been as bad as this, because then he hadn’t been conscious. He’d gone into a coma a boy and woken up har. This was disgustingly different. It could have been him lying there on that bed with blood and shit running out of him. Hellish injury. Such violation. Too human to contemplate for someone who believed he’d transcended humanity. It could have happened to him anytime. He’d taken aruna with other high-ranking hara. Nohar knew what they were risking. Nohar. How could such a rank visceral event result from the blissful aruna that had caused it? He remembered the night they’d made the pearl, the feeling of having transcended the flesh, of touching Heaven. The closeness of it. The bond. Herien, so trusting, so completely surrendered to love, that a part of himself, deep inside, had opened like a flower: a part that had never opened before. And a previously unused part of Rarn’s ouana-lim had woken up, drawn by the alluring song of that secret inner organ and had ventured forth to enter it. In such a way were Wraeththu harlings conceived.
Rarn pressed the fingers of one hand against his eyes. His body shuddered with dry sobs. So much to learn. So much. He felt full of love and sadness. He was beginning to understand what it meant to be truly har.
In the pavilion, Chisbet finished off the wound packing and sat back for a moment to admire his work. Herien had still not come round. Chisbet knew he’d done a good job on the stitches; the har would be fine in a few days. He changed the soiled bedding around Herien, made him comfortable, and then turned his attention to the pearl. Gently, he cleaned it. He had seen this happen only once before, among the Unneah, and that event had occasioned more upset than this one. He smiled to himself in recollection. Every har in the tribe had trembled in terror then, as if a plague had come upon them. Chisbet wasn’t distressed by harish birth. He had spoken the truth when he’d called it a miracle. Until you’d seen this, Wraeththu bodies and all their pleasing accessories seemed only like ornaments. This was real and bloody. To Chisbet, it was proof that they were meant to be. New life.
Chisbet shed a few sentimental tears from his remaining eye and then laid the pearl in the curve of Herien’s right arm. The pearl was dark in colour and strangely veined. There was a sense of life moving within it. Chisbet wiped Herien’s brow with a scented damp cloth and Herien opened his eyes. His mouth trembled. He looked so young.
Chisbet stroked his face. ‘You’re fine, my lovely. Fine. All went well. You are a pioneer, you know. You’re blessed.’
‘Where’s Rarn?’ Herien asked in a slurred mumble. He hadn’t yet noticed the pearl.
‘Taking a breath of air,’ Chisbet said. ‘You keep that young one warm now. Cherish it as a mother hen cherishes her clutch.’
Herien glanced down, saw the pearl and went rigid. For a moment, Chisbet was concerned that he’d throw it away from him.
‘That’s yours,’ he said. ‘Part of you. Don’t be afraid.’
Herien laid his head back on the pillows and began to weep, but his fingers flexed gently against the pearl. Chisbet held onto his left hand, squeezing it hard. He sighed. It was tough, growing up.
Rarn did not