x
In the cavern's stillness, Alexandra heard the scrape of sand upon rock as people moved, the distant bird call that Trek-Jush had said were the signals of his watchmen.
The great plastic hood-seals had been removed from the cave's opening. She could see the march of evening shadows across the lip of rock in front of her and the open basin beyond. She sensed the daylight leaving them, sensed it in the dry heat as well as the shadows. She knew her trained awareness soon would give her what these Szganys obviously had----the ability to sense even the slightest change in the air's moisture.
How they had scurried to tighten their stillsuits when the cave was opened!
Deep inside the cave, someone began chanting:
"Iko sroqo uduru!
I duramio uduru!"
Alexandra translated silently: These are ashes! And these are roots!
The funeral ceremony for Ros-Tharn was starting!
She looked out at the Dyuni sunset, at the banked decks of color in the sky. Night was starting to utter its shadows along the distant rocks and the dunes.
Yet the heat persisted.
Heat forced her thoughts onto the water and the observed fact that the whole people could be trained to be thirsty only at given times.
Thirst!
She could remember moonlit waves on Eser throwing white robes over rocks---and the wind thick with dampness. Now the breeze that fingered her robes seared the patches of exposed skin at cheeks and forehead. The new nose plugs irritated her, and she found herself overly conscious of the tube that trailed down across her face into the suit, recovering her breath's moisture.
The suit itself was a sweatbox!
"Your suit will be more comfortable when you've adjusted to a lower water content in your body," Trek-Jush had said.
She knew he was right, but the knowledge made this moment no more comfortable. The unconscious preoccupation with water here weighed on her mind. No, she corrected herself: it was preoccupation with moisture.
That was a more subtle and profound matter.
She heard approaching footsteps, turned to see Alexei come out of the cave's depths trailed by the elfin-faced Em-Cro.
There's another thing, Alexandra thought. Alexei must be cautioned about their women. One of these desert wenches would not do as a wife to a Duke. As a concubine, yes, but not as a wife.
Then she wondered at herself, thinking: Have I been tainted by his schemes? And she saw how well she'd been conditioned. I can think of the marital needs of royalty without once weighing my own concubinage. Yet, I was more than a concubine.
"Mother."
Alexei stopped in front of her. Em-Cro stood at his elbow.
"Mother, do you know what they're doing back there?"
Alexandra looked at the dark patch of his eyes staring out from the hood. "I believe so."
"Em-Cro showed me----because I'm supposed to see it and give my----permission for the weighing of the water.
Alexandra looked at Em-Cro.
"They're recovering Ros-Tharn's water," Em-Cro said, and her thin voice came out nasal past the nose plugs. "It's the rule. The flesh belongs to the person, but his water belongs to the tribe---except in the combat."
"They say the water's mine," Alexei said.
Alexandra wondered why this should make her suddenly alert and cautious.
"Combat water belongs to the winner," Em-Cro said. "For you must fight in the open without benefit of stillsuits. The winner must get his water back that he loses during combat."
"I don't want his water," Alexei muttered. He felt that he was a part of many images moving simultaneously in a fragmenting way that was disconcerting to the inner eye. He couldn't be sure what he'd do, but of one thing he was sure: he didn't want the water squeezed out of Ros-Tharn's flesh.
"Water is water," Em-Cro said.
Alexandra marveled at the way she said it. "Water." So much meaning in an easy sound. A Bala Garrasaid axiom came to Alexandra's mind: "Survival is the ability to swim in uncharted waters." Alexandra thought: Alexei and I must find the currents and patterns in these uncharted waters, if we are to survive.
"As your mother, I admonish you to accept the water," Alexandra said.
She recognized the tone in her voice. She had used that same tone once with Nicholas, telling her lost Duke that he would accept a large sum offered for his support in a questionable venture, because money was the key to power in Imperial high society.
On Dyuna, water was money. She saw that clearly.
Alexei stayed quiet, knowing then that he would do as she ordered, not because she ordered it, but because her voice-tone had forced him to reconsider. To refuse the water would be to break with ancient Szgany customs.
Presently, Alexei recalled the words of 467 Kalima in Rasputin's A.O. Bible. He said: "From water does all life begin."
Alexandra stared at him. Where did he learn that quotation? she asked herself. He hasn't studied the Mysteries.
"Thus, it is spoken," Em-Cro said. "Giedecror komsama: It is written in the Sror-Noko that water was the first thing of all that was created."
For no reason she could explain (this bothered her more than the sensation), Alexandra suddenly shuddered. She turned away to hide her confusion and was just in time to see the sunset. A violent calamity of color spilled over the sky as the sun sank beneath the horizon.
"It is time!"
The voice was Trek-Jush's ringing in the cavern. "Ros-Tharn's weapon has been killed. Ros-Tharn has been called by Him, by Kroe-ririd, who has ordained the phases for the moons that daily wane and, in the end, appear as bent and withered twigs." Trek-Jush's voice dropped. "Thus, shall be with Ros-Tharn."
Silence fell like a curtain upon the cavern.
Alexandra saw the gray-shadow movement of Trek-Jush like a ghostly figure within the dark inner reaches. She glanced back at the basin, sensing the coolness.
"Let the friends of Ros-Tharn approach!" Trek-Jush commanded.
Men moved behind Alexandra, dropping a curtain across the opening. One glowglobe was lighted overhead far back in the cave. Its yellow glow picked out an inflowing of human figures. Alexandra heard the rustling of the robes.
Em-Cro took one step away as if pulled by the light.
Alexandra bent close to Alexei's ear, speaking in the family code. "Follow their lead; do as they do. It will be an easy ceremony to placate the sahde of Ros-Tharn."
It'll be more than that, Alexei thought. He felt a wrenching sensation within his awareness as though he were trying to grasp something in a motion and render it motionlelss.
Em-Cro glided back to Alexandra's side, took her hand. "Come, Soaeaeodemo. We must sit apart."
Alexei watched them move off into the shadows, leaving him alone. He felt abandoned.
The men who had fixed the curtain came up beside him.
"Come, Mar-Vall."
He allowed himself to be guided forward, to be pushed into a circle of people being informed around Trek-Jush, who stood beneath the glowglobe and beside a bundled, curving, and angular shape gathered beneath a robe on the rock floor.
The troop crouched down at a gesture from Trek-Jush, their robes hissing with the movement. Alexei settled with them, watching Trek-Jush, noting the way the overhead globe made pits of his eyes and brightened the touch of green fabric at his neck. Alexei shifted his attention to the robe-covered mound at Trek-Jush's feet, recognized the handle of a baliset protruding from the fabric.
"The spirit departs the body's water when the first moon rises," Trek-Jush intoned. "Thus it is spoken. When we see the first moon rise tonight, whom will it summon?"
"Ros-Tharn," the troop responded.
Trek-Jush turned full circle on one heel, passing his gaze across the ring of faces. "I was Ros-Tharn's friend," he said. "When the hawk plane stooped upon us at Hole-in-the-Rock, it was Ros-Tharn who pulled us to safety."
He bent over the pile beside him, lifted away the robe. "I take this robe as a friend of Ros-Tharn---leader's right." He draped the robe over a shoulder, straightening up.
Now, Alexei saw the contents of the mound exposed: the pale glistening gray of a stillsuit, a battered literjon, a kerchief with a small book in its middle, the bladeless handle of a crysnozh, an empty sheath, a folded pack, a paracompass, a distrans, a thumper, a pile of fist-sized metallic hooks, an assortment of what looked like small rocks within a fold of cloth, a clump of bundled feathers, and the ostriolkusk exposed beside the folded pack.
So Ros-Tharn played the ostriolkusk, Alexei thought. The instrument reminded him of Gustav Vasa and all that was gone. Alexei knew within his memory of the future in the past that some chance-lines could produce a meeting with Vasa, but the reunions were few and shadowed. They puzzled him. The uncertainty factor touched him with wonder. Does it mean that something I'll do, or may do, could destroy Gustav, or bring him to life, or......
Alexei shook his head.
Again Trek-Jush bent over the mound.
"For Ros-Tharn's woman and for the guards," he said. The small rocks and the book were taken into the folds of his robe.
"Leader's right," the troop intoned.
Lastly, he took the crysnozh handle and stood with it. "For the funeral plain,' he said.
"For the funeral plain," the troop responded.
At er place in the circle across from Alexei, Alexandra nodded, recognizing the ancient source of the rite, and she thought: The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture---it starts in the dignity with which we treat our dead. She looked across at Alexei, wondering: Will he see it? Will he know what to do?
"We are friends of Ros-Tharn," Trek-Jush said. "We are not waiting for our dead like a pack of garvarg."
A gray-bearded man to Alexei's left stood up. "I was a friend of Ros-Tharn," he said. He crossed to the mound, lifted the distrans. "When our water went below minimum at the siege of 2 Birds, Ros-Tharn shared." The man returned to his place in the circle.
Am I supposed to say I was a friend of Ros-Tharn? Alexei wondered. Do they expect me to take something from that pile? He saw faces turn towards him, turn away. They do expect it!
Another man across from Alexie stood up, went to the pack and removed the paracompass. "I was a friend of Ros-Tharn," he said. "When the patrol caught us at Bight-of-the-Cliff, and I was wounded, Ros-Tharn drew them off so the wounded could be saved." He returned to his place in the circle.
Again, the faces turned towards Alexei, and he saw the expectancy in them, lowered his eyes. An elbow nudged him and a voice hissed: "Would you bring the destruction on us?"
I can't say that I was his friend! Alexei thought.
Another figure arose from the circle opposite Alexei and, as the hooded face came into the light, he recognized his mother. She removed a kerchief from the mount. "I was a friend of Ros-Tharn," she said. "When the spirit of spirits inside him saw the needs of truth, that spirit withdrew and spared my son." She returned to her place.
Alexei recalled the scorn in his mother's voice as she had confronted him after the fight: "How does it feel to be a killer?"
Again, he saw the faces turned towards him, felt the anger and fear in the troop. A passage his mother had once filmbooked for him on "The Cult of the Dead" flickered through Alexei's mind. He knew what he had to do.
Slowly, Alexei rose to his feet.
A sigh passed around the circle.
Alexei felt the diminishment of his self as he advanced into the middle of the circle. It was as if he lost a piece of himself and sought it here. He bent over the mound of belongings, lifted out the ostriolkusk. A string twanged softly as it struck against something in the pile.
"I was a friend of Ros-Tharn," Alexei whispered.
He felt tears burning his eyes, forced more volume into his voice. "Ros-Tharn taught me---that---when you kill----you pay for it. I wish I'd known Ros-Tharn better."
Blindly, he groped his way back to his place in the middle, sank to the rock floor.
A voice hissed: "He sheds tears!"
It was taken up around the ring: "Mar-Vall gives moisture to the dead!"
He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.
Alexandra, hearing the voices, felt the depth of experience and realized what horrible inhibitions there must be against shedding tears. She focused on the words: "He gives moisture to the dead." It was a gift to the shadow world---tears. They would be scared, of that there was no doubt.
Nothing on this planet had forcibly hammered into her the ultimate value of water. Not the water-sellers, not the dried skins of the natives, not stillsuits or the rules of water discipline. Here there was a substance more precious than all others----it was life itself and entwined all around with symbolism and ritual.
Water!
"I touched his cheek and felt the gift," someone whispered.
At first, the fingers touching his face scared Alexei. He clutched the cold handle of the ostriolkusk, feeling the strings bite into his palm. Then he saw the faces beyond the groping hands--the eyes wide and wondering.
Presently, the hands withdrew. The funeral ceremony resumed. But now there was a subtle space around Alexei, a drawing back as the troop honored him by a respectful isolation.
The ceremony concluded in a low chant:
"Full moon calls thee...
Kroe-ririd shalt thou see;
Red the night, dusky sky,
Bloody death thou didst die.
We pray to a moon: she is round....
Luck with us will then abound,
What we look for shall be found
In the land of solid ground."
A bulging sack remained at Trek-Jush's feet. He crouched, placed his palms against it. Someone came up beside him, crouched at his elbow, and Alexei recognized Em-Cro's face in the hood shadow.
"Ros-Tharn carried 33 liters and 7 and three-thirty-seconds drachms of the tribe's water," Em-Cro said. "I bless it now in the presence of the Soaeaeodemo. Eddare-odoere, this is the water, kerrekkem-kurrokae of Alexei-Niaeb'D'd! Keq o-doge, never the more, modork! Nodarok! To be measured and counted, idoer-om! By the heartbeats jan-jan-jan of our comrade----Ros-Tharn.
In an abrupt, profound silence, Em-Cro turned, stared at Alexei. Presently, she said: "Where I am flame be thou the coals. Where I am dew be thou the water."
"Be-ror doeko," intoned the troopo.
"To Alexei-Niaeb'D'd goes this portion," Em-Cro said. " May he guard it for the tribe, preserving it against careless loss. May he be generous with it in time of need. May he pass it on in his time for the good of the tribe."
"Be-ror doeko," intoned the troop.
I must accept that water, Alexei thought. Slowly, he arose, made his way to Em-Cro's side. Trek-Jush stepped back to make room for him, took the ostriolkusk gently from his hands.
"Kneel, please," Em-Cro said.
Alexei obeyed.
She guided his hands to the waterbag, held them against the resilient surface. "With this water the tribe entrusts thee," she said. "Ros-Tharn is gone from it. Take it in peace." She stood, pulling Alexei up with her.
Ros-Tharn returned the ostriolkusk, extended a small pile of metal rings in one palm. Alexei looked at them, seeing the different sizes, the way the light of the glowglobe reflected off them.
Em-Cro took the biggest ring, held it on a finger. "30 liters," she said. 1 by 1, she took the others, showing each to Alexei, counting them. "2 liters; 1 liter; 7 watercounters of 1 drachm each; one watercounter of three-thirty-seconds drachms. In all---33 liters and seven and thirty-three-seconds drachms."
She held them up on her finger for Alexei to see.
"Do you accept them?" Trek-Jush asked.
Alexei swallowed, nodded. "I do."
"Later," Em-Cro said, "I will show you how to tie them in a kerchief so they won't rattle and give you away when you need silence." She extended her hand.
"Will you----hold them for me," Alexei asked.
Em-Cro turned a startled glance on Trek-Jush.
He smiled, said, "Alexei-Niaeb'D'd who is Mar-Vall does not yet know our ways, Em-Cro. Hold his watercounters without commitment until it's time to show him the manner of carrying them."
She nodded, whipped a ribbon of cloth from beneath her robe, linked the rings onto it with an intricate over and under weaving, hesitated, then stuffed them into the sash beneath her robe.
I missed something there, Alexei thought. He sensed the feeling of humor around him, something bantering in it, and his mind liked up a prescient memory: watercounters offered to a woman----a courtship ritual!
"Watermasters," Trek-Jush said;.
The troop arose in a hissing of robes. 2 men stepped out, lifted the waterbag. Trek-Jush took down the glowglobe, led the way with it into the depths of the cave.
Alexei was pressed in behind Em-Cro, noted the buttery glow of light over rock walls, the way the shadows danced, and he felt the troop's lift of spirits contained in a hushed air of expectancy.
Alexandra pulled into the end of the troop by eager hands, hemmed around by jostling bodies, suppressed a moment of panic. She had recognized fragments of the ritual, identified the shards of Chakobsa and Brusome-ieb in the words, and she knew the wild violence that could explode out of these seemingly simple moments.
Jan-jan-jan, she thought. Go-go-go.
It was like a child's game that had lost all inhibition in adult hands.
Trek-Jush stopped at a yellow rock wall. He pressed an outcropping and the wall swung silently away from him, opening along an irregular crack. He led the way through past a dark honeycomb lattice that directed a cool wash of air across Alexei when he passed it.
Alexei turned a questioning stare on Em-Cro, tugged at her arm. "That air felt damp," he said.
"Sh-h-h-h-h," she whispered.
But a man behind them said, "There's plenty of moisture in the trap tonight. Ros-Tharn's way of telling us he's satisfied."
Alexandra passed through the secret door, heard it close behind her. She saw how the Szganys slowed while passing the honeycomb lattice, felt the dampness of the air as she came opposite it.
Windtrap! she thought. They've got a hidden windtrap somewhere on the surface to funnel air down here into cooler regions and precipitate the moisture from it.
They passed through another rock door with latticework above it, and the door shut behind them. The air draft at their backs carried a sensation of moisture clearly perceptible to both Alexandra and Alexei.
At the head of the troop, the glowglobe in Trek-Jush's hands dropped below the level of the heads in front of Alexei. Presently he felt steps beneath his feet, curving down to the left. Light reflected back up across hooded heads and a winding movement of people spiraling down the stairs.
Alexandra sensed mounting tension in the people around her, a pressure of silence that rasped her nerves with its urgency.
The steps ended and the troop passed through another low door. The light of the glowglobe was swallowed in a great open space with a high curved ceiling.
Alexei felt Em-Cro's hand on his arm, heard a faint dripping sound in the chill air, felt an utter stillness come over the Szganys in the cathedral presence of water.
I've seen this place in my dreams, he thought.
The thought was both reassuring and frustrating. Somewhere ahead of him on his path, the fanatical hordes cut their gory path across the universe in his name. The green and black Romanov banner would become a symbol of terror. Wild legions would charge into battle screaming their war cry: "Niaeb'D'd!"
It must not be, he thought. I can't let it happen.
But he could feel the demanding race consciousness inside him, his own horrible purpose, and he knew that no small thing would deflect the juggernaut. It was gathering weight and momentum. If he died this instant, the thing would go on through his mother and his unborn sister. Nothing less than the deaths of all the troop gathered here and now---himself and his mother included---could stop the thing.
Alexei stared around him, saw the troop spread out in a line. They pressed him forward against a low barrier carved from a native rock. Beyond the barrier in the glow of Ros-Tharn's globe, Alexei saw an unruffled dark surface of water. It stretched away into shadows---deep and black---the far wall only faintly visible, perhaps 100 meters away.
Alexandra felt the dry pulling of skin on her cheeks and forehead, relaxing in the presence of moisture. The water pool was deep; she could sense its dampness, an resisted a desire to dip her hands into it.
A splashing sound on her left. She looked down the shadowy line of Szganys, saw Trek-Jush with Alexei standing beside him and the watermasters emptying their load into the pool through a flowmeter. The meter was a round gray eye above the pool's rim. She saw its glowing pointer move as the water flowed through it, saw the pointer stop at 33 liters, seven and three-thirty-seconds drachms.
Superb accuracy in water measurement, Alexandra thought. She noted that the walls of the meter-wide trough held no moisture traces after the water's passage. The water flowed off those walls without blinding tension. She saw a profound clue to Szgany technology in the simple fact: they were perfectionists.
Alexandra worked he way down the barrier to Trek-Jush's side. Way was made for her with casual courtesy. She noted the withdrawn look in Alexei's eyes, but the mystery of this great pool of water dominated her thoughts.
Trek-Jush looked at her. "There were those among us in need of water," he said. "yet they would come here and not touch the water. Do you know that?"
"I believe it," she said.
He looked at the pool. "We've more than thirty-eight million decaliters here," he said. "Walled off from the little makers, hidden and preserved."
"A treasure trove," she said.
Trek-Jush lifted the globe to look into her eyes. "It's greater than treasure. We've thousands of such caches. Only a few of us know them all." He cocked his head to one side. The globe cast a yellow shadowed glow across face and beard. "You hear that?"
They listened.
The dripping of water precipitated from the windtrap filled the room with its presence. Alexandra saw that the whole troop was caught up in a rapture of listening. Only Alexei seemed to stand remote from it.
To Alexei, the sound was like moments ticking away. He could feel time flowing through him, the instants never to be recaptured. He sensed a need for decision, but felt powerless to move.
"It's been calculated with precision," Trek-Jush whispered. "We know to within a million decaliters how much we need. When we have it, we shall change the face of Dyuna."
A hushed whisper of response lifted from the troop. "Be-ror doeko."
"We shall trap the dunes 'neath grass plantings," Trek-Jush said, his voice growing stronger. "We shall tie the water into the soil with trees and undergrowth."
"Be-ror doeko," intoned the troop.
"Each year the polar ice retreats," Trek-Jush said.
"Be-ror doeko," they chanted.
"We shall make a homeworld of Dyuna---with melting lenses at the poles, with lakes in the temperate zones, and only the deep desert for the maker and his spice."
"Be-ror doeko."
"No man shall ever again want for water. It shall be his for dipping from well or pond or lake or canal. It shall run down through the qanats to feed our plants. It shall be there for any man to take. It shall be his for holding out his hand."
"Be-ror doeko."
Alexandra felt the religious ritual in the words, noted her own instinctively awed response. They're in league with the future, she thought. They have their mountain to climb. This is the scientist's dream---and these simple people, these peasants, are filled with it.
Her thoughts turned to Re-Phes Holstein, the Emperor's planetary ecologist, the man who had gone native----and she wondered at him. This was a dream to capture men's souls, and she could sense the hand of the ecologist in it. This was a dream for which men would willingly die. It was another of the essential ingredients that she felt her son needed: people with a goal. Such people would be easy to imbue with fervor and fanaticism. They could be wielded like a sword to win back Alexei's place for him.
"We leave now," Trek-Jush said, "and wait for the first moon's rising. When Ros-Tharn is safely on his way, we will go home."
Whispering their reluctance, the troop fell in behind him, turned back along the water barrier and up the stairs.
Alexei, walking behind Em-Cro, felt that a vital moment had passed him, that he had missed an essential decision and was now caught up in his own myth. He knew he'd seen this place before, experienced it in a fragment of prescient dream on faraway Eser, but details of the place were being filled in now that he had not previously seen. He felt a new sense of wonder at the limits of his gift. It was as if he rode within the wave of time, sometimes in its trough, sometimes on a crest----and all around him the other waves lifted and fell, revealing and then hiding what they bore on their surface.
Through it all, the wild dzikhad still loomed ahead of him, the violence and the slaughter. It was like a promontory above the surf.
The troop filed through the last do or into the main cavern. The door was sealed. Lights were extinguished, hoods removed from the cavern openings, revealing the night and the stars that had come over the desert.
Alexandra moved to the dry lip of the cavern's edge, looked up at the stars. They were sharp and near. She felt the stirring of the troop around her, heard the sound of an ostriolkusk being tuned somewhere behind her, and Alexei's voice humming the pitch. There was a melancholy in his tone that she did not like.
Em-Cro's voice intruded from the deep cave darkness: "Tell me about the waters of your birthworld, Alexei Niaeb'D'd."
Alexei: "Another time, Em-Cro. I promise."
Such sadness.
"It's a good ostriolkusk," Em-Cro said.
"Very good," Alexei said. "Will Ros-Tharn object to me using it?"
He speaks of the dead in the present tense, Alexandra thought. The implications frightened her.
A man's voice intervened: "He liked music betimes, Ros-Tharn did."
"Then sing me one of your songs," Em-Cro pleaded.
Such feminine allure in that girl-child's voice, Alexandra thought. I must caution Alexei about their women---and soon!
"This was a song of a friend of mine," Alexei said. "I expect he's dead now, Gustav is. He called it his evensong."
The troop grew still, listening as Alexei's voice lifted in a sweet boy tenor with the ostriolkusk tinkling and strumming beneath it.
"This clear time of seeing embers---237Please respect copyright.PENANARgcDjj9bP0
A gold-bright sun's lost in first dusk237Please respect copyright.PENANAnfV4zWxyLB
What are frenzied senses, deep'rate musk237Please respect copyright.PENANA5YwuFZW4wq
Are consort of rememb'ring."237Please respect copyright.PENANAaJ6IZGe2B5
A gold-bright sun's lost in first dusk237Please respect copyright.PENANAnfV4zWxyLB
What are frenzied senses, deep'rate musk237Please respect copyright.PENANA5YwuFZW4wq
Are consort of rememb'ring."237Please respect copyright.PENANAaJ6IZGe2B5
Alexandra felt the verbal music in her breast---pagan and charged with sounds that made her suddenly and intensely aware of herself, feeling her own body and its needs. She listened with a tense stillness.237Please respect copyright.PENANAW86f3VGRt3
"Night's pearl-censured requi-em...237Please respect copyright.PENANARGil6PaFWp
'Tis for us!237Please respect copyright.PENANA4iOo2HslZi
What joys run, then...237Please respect copyright.PENANAccnmMZXcnc
Bright in your eyes....237Please respect copyright.PENANAAhcdRC4cU9
What flower-spangled amores237Please respect copyright.PENANAimCYt1EuwS
Fill our desires."237Please respect copyright.PENANAworJ7xju7G
'Tis for us!237Please respect copyright.PENANA4iOo2HslZi
What joys run, then...237Please respect copyright.PENANAccnmMZXcnc
Bright in your eyes....237Please respect copyright.PENANAAhcdRC4cU9
What flower-spangled amores237Please respect copyright.PENANAimCYt1EuwS
Fill our desires."237Please respect copyright.PENANAworJ7xju7G
Alexandra heard the afterstillness that hummed in the air with the final note. Why does my son sing a love song to that girl-child? she asked herself. She felt an abrupt fear. She could sense life flowing around her and she had no grasp on its reins. Why did he choose that song? she wondered. The instincts are true sometimes. Why did he do this?237Please respect copyright.PENANAYzAslsJXtu
Alexei sat silently in the darkness, one stark thought dominating his awareness: My mother is my enemy. She does not know it, but she is. She's bringing the jihad. She bore me, she trained me. She's my enemy.
237Please respect copyright.PENANAig8wk9UucJ
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