3. Sullha
SULLHA
" C an I stay with Bowen?" Tomek asked, dragging Sullha's attention from the women.
"Yes, of course, sweetheart. The two of you are dry because you traveled inside the case, so you'd better stay away from all the wet ones."
Tomek accepted her logic with a nod and ran off to catch the Guardian, who was helping the others sort out the equipment.
Some of the Guardians were already peeling out of their wetsuits, shamelessly exposing their impressive bare chests, and pulling their own dry clothing out of their waterproof packs.
Sullha and the other women had left the enclosure with nothing but a few precious items the warriors had placed in their dry packs.
They'd had no room for extra clothing, and the old uniforms the women had worn had been sunk to the bottom of the cove.
No one was going to miss them, and they'd been promised that they would get new things once they arrived at their first land destination, but right now, they had nothing to change into.
Hopefully, the wetsuits would eventually dry on their skin, but until then, they had to sit there sodden and miserable.
Oh well. It was a small price to pay for freedom.
She headed toward them, zeroing in on Rohilah, who was sitting with her little girl in her lap and getting her wet. Like Tomek, Bianca had made the journey inside a sealed case, so she'd arrived dry, but unlike Tomek, she looked scared and was clinging to her mother.
"Mama!" Tomek called from behind her. "I have something for you."
She turned to see him running toward her, holding a bundle of fabric in his hands.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Bowen's friend, his name is Alfie, he said that you can wear his shirt if you don't mind that it's dirty.
He said that dirty is better than wet, but if you don't want it, he is not going to be insulted.
" Tomek extended his hand, which was apparently holding a shirt, and leaned closer.
"You should wear it. It was so nice of him to give you his shirt.
It's not going to be nice if you say no because it's dirty. "
Tomek's logic was as solid as always, and as she turned to look for the generous shirt donor, she found him by the bright smile he flashed her the moment her eyes landed on his face and stayed there so she wouldn't have to look at his bare chest.
"Thank you!" she called out.
"You're welcome. I'm collecting more for the other ladies." He lifted the shirts he was already holding.
"Thank you," she said again. "That's very kind of you. I'll tell my friends that the shirts are for them."
The men had worn these shirts during the operation, and they were dusty from the work and carried the smell of their owners. But at least they had been kept dry under the wetsuits.
She would have to tell the women to accept the generous offer even if it bothered them, because Tomek was right. To say no would be ungracious. It would be offensive.
She crossed the rest of the way to the women and showed them the shirt Alfie had donated.
"The warriors are offering us their shirts so we can have something dry to wear.
" She unfurled the shirt in her hand and held it in front of her to show them how long it was on her body.
"These shirts will cover us from neck to knee, so if you are brave, you can also take off your wet underwear.
I for one am going to do that." She added a smile, hoping to get some back, but the women just stared at her as if they hadn't understood a word she'd said.
Had she spoken in English and not noticed? Or were they just grossed out by the idea of wearing something that carried the smell of a man?
Given the hesitation she saw on their faces, it was the latter, the cold pulling one way and the deep-seated aversion pulling the other.
Sullha understood. For women who had spent their lives having no reason to trust men and every reason to fear and resent them, wrapping themselves in the scent of one was not easily done.
Eventually the cold won, and as Alfie arrived with a large bundle of shirts, they each took one.
Changing was another matter, since there was not much privacy to be had on the small fishing boat, but they improvised with a tarp held by three while the others changed, then traded places so those three could change too.
Sullha was among the last three, and as she stripped off the wetsuit and pulled on the shirt, it felt wonderful despite the dust and the smell of a stranger. It was dry and warm, and the slight smell was a small price to pay for that.
She turned and looked for Alfie, intending to thank him again, when she saw Yaaf heading her way.
"There is a bathroom below deck," he said.
"That's good to know."
He was still wearing his wetsuit, peeled down to the waist and tied off to be out of the way, because he had nothing to change into either.
Whatever he and his friends had worn before putting on their wetsuits now lay on the bottom of the cove, along with what she and the other women had been wearing, so there would be no trace of them and no clue where they had gone.
The women at least had the few small items that the Guardians had stored for them. Yaaf and his friends had left everything behind. Other than their identification tags, they had retained nothing from their former lives.
Yaaf's was hanging from his neck, and she did her best to focus on the metal rather than the smooth, tan skin and the muscles rippling beneath.
The tag was stamped with a number, and it wasn't one or eight. The one-through-eight they used among themselves was their own, a thing between them. This was something else, a serial number stamped into the metal to tell one soldier from the next.
The others had similar plates hanging from chains around their necks. At the moment, they were heading toward the group of women, who looked a little better now that they were dry and warm.
Yaaf's friends' destination was obvious, and even though Sullha had known it would come, she was still anxious.
The reunion the mothers had surely dreamed of throughout the years was not going to be simple.
The boys they remembered were gone, and the men they were now bore little resemblance to those boys.
The men had not forgotten their mothers, and they'd been familiarizing themselves with them as well as their sisters through Yaaf's visits to the enclosure.
As Number Two approached Mirumah, she rose and stood before him.
She had to tip her head back to look up at him.
Her son, the boy she had last seen as a thirteen-year-old, was now a grown man who was a head and a half taller than she was, broad-shouldered, wearing a stranger's face with only the ghost of the child she’d named Dumuz a faint echo in his features.
She lifted a hand halfway toward his face and paused, uncertain.
Dumuz looked down at her, and neither of them said anything, because they didn't know what to say.
"Dumuz?" Mirumah finally spoke, and it came out as a question, as though she were not sure the name still belonged to him.
"Mother." He said it without inflection, and Sullha wondered whether he was devoid of feeling or just overwhelmed and didn't know how to act around someone he was supposed to feel close to but didn't.
It continued in a similar manner with the others.
Baruha reached for Number Four. “Camdor?”
“It’s me.” He let her touch his arm and even tried to smile, but it only made the exchange more awkward.
“My Ravsoh.” Zohara started crying. “Is it really you? I heard them calling you Number Six.”
“Both are me. Number Six and Ravsoh.” He looked lost, not knowing what to do with his hands, and ended up gently patting her shoulder.
They were strangers, and their shared blood didn't sing the same tune. The boys had been taken and remade into something that was supposed to be completely severed from all familial ties, and their mothers had already grieved their loss. Now they stood face to face and did not know what to do.
Sullha could see the yearning for love on both sides, but nothing had been built yet to hold it, no years of small, ordinary days, no accumulated history, nothing but a gap that would take a long time to cross.
Some, though, might get there faster than others.
Karina lifted a trembling hand to the face of Number Five. “Armos,” she said his name in a whisper.
He closed his eyes and leaned into her palm as if an old childhood instinct was surfacing through the brutal conditioning that had remade him. Pressing her hand to his cheek, Karina sniffled, and for a moment, he looked less like a soldier and more like a boy who had missed his mother.
Sullha's throat tightened.
Tersan proceeded with far more ease than the others as he'd been given a head start, watching over Rohilah and little Bianca through the tunnel and the cove.
Now he crouched to Bianca's level and let the two-year-old pat his face with both hands. “I’m your big brother. My name is Tersan, but my friends call me Number Three.”
Rohilah pressed her hand to her mouth, and tears glistened in her eyes.
The difference between the two of them and the stiffness of the other pairs was an indicator of how much time the rest of it would take.
A few hours of contact had made Tersan almost a son again, and since the others could draw on what he'd already learned, it would make it easier for them.
Voset walked over to Gindah. “I’m Number Seven, also known as Voset.”
She nodded. “I know. I would have known your face anywhere. Do you have news of your brothers?”
Voset had two younger brothers in the Brotherhood, but according to Yaaf, familial ties were not encouraged, so he probably hadn’t been in contact with them.
The mothers didn't know about the shared mind yet, the eight-in-one that made their sons a unit instead of separate men.
There would be time for that.
The women were overwhelmed enough as it was, and Sullha knew what it took to accept the bizarre reality of a merged mind and learn to love its individual parts.
The mothers would have to learn that loving one of them meant loving all eight, and they would have to learn to live with that.