The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,97

Eventually, he introduced the subject and found she didn’t mind talking about it. She told him that once she had thought about it all the time, how different and how similar she might be to Ulaume, but now she didn’t consider it much at all. It no longer seemed important. ‘Not since you came,’ she said. ‘You’re showing me better things.’

She looked as if she was a human child of five or so, yet her manner and her intelligence was far more mature. ‘Will you show me something, Lee?’ Flick asked. ‘I want to understand about you. Can I see what your body is like?’

She hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want to do that. It wouldn’t feel right.’

‘That’s OK. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Perhaps when I’m older,’ she said gravely.

‘There may be others like you,’ Flick said, and Lileem cast him a strange, furtive glance.

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe we’ll never know.’

Sefton Richards had owned quite an impressive library, and Flick began teaching Lileem from its books. They would sit together at the wide desk in the old dark room, with the morning light falling in upon them, making a pool of radiance near the window.

One day, Lileem pored over an old biology book, studying the diagrams of human bodies. ‘How strange to be so…’, she wrinkled up her nose, ‘incomplete.’

‘Perhaps you could try drawing what a har looks like, what you look like,’ Flick said carefully.

‘OK.’ She pushed her hair back behind her ears and began to draw slowly. ‘Men and women must have been really jealous of one another.’

‘That’s an interesting way of looking at things.’

Lileem grinned, because she liked compliments. Presently, she handed her drawing to Flick and he had to suppress a smile. ‘Lileem, there are all sorts of extras on this! Don’t tell me it looks like you.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s what I want to be like. We should have wings everywhere, shouldn’t we?’

‘In a perfect world, maybe! Here, let me draw something for you. I’m no artist, but it’ll give you and idea.’

Flick gave Lileem a very badly drawn diagram of Wraeththu physiology and told her to keep it. She glanced at it, folded the paper twice and put in the pocket of her trousers. Flick sensed she still felt her body was very private, perhaps because of careless things Ulaume might have said in the past. To Lileem, there was no need to dwell on what she was. She was only a child, and the vast reaches of time stretching before her obviously meant little. But Flick knew that she couldn’t hide away here forever; none of them could. They could live for a long time and eventually Wraeththu society would reach out and touch them in some way. It was not inconceivable that other hara had already been compelled to find the birthplace of Pellaz Cevarro. He had no doubt met many people on his travels with Cal and had affected them like he’d affected Ulaume. One day, Flick was sure, others would find them here. And by then Lileem might be adult. She was an enigma, and there was neither prurient nor morbidly curious intent on Flick’s part when he’d asked to see her body. He felt it was essential he should know and privately scorned Ulaume for not investigating the matter when Lileem had been younger. It showed, in his opinion, a lack of responsibility. Now, Lileem was shy about such things and not even Mima knew what secrets she hid beneath her clothes. Ulaume had only seen her naked when she was very little and said that although the ouana organs had appeared atrophied the soume-lam had seemed fairly normal, but how could they tell? None of them had seen a Wraeththu harling before. Lileem insisted she was more female than male, and Mima, perhaps for reasons of her own, tended to agree. Lileem wanted to be termed ‘she’, but this might only be because she knew she was different and not because it was a correct label for her difference.

As for Mima, Flick thought that being around hara had changed her. She was so like Pell, it was uncanny, and not just in physical appearance. There was a strangely familiar aura around her and when it touched Flick as they worked together, he felt there was another har beside him, not a human female. He was not drawn to her sexually. Instead, it inspired a kind of comfort within him. He felt he could trust