Chapter 19 A Distinct Lack of Tranquility #2
All his life Arris had felt as if he was swimming from one day to the next, always looking for something to grasp hold of to make sense of his surroundings.
Whenever Demelza spoke, things felt different.
Her honesty had a way of crystallizing a moment.
Perhaps it was her truth magic that made the world feel a little more real when he was in her presence.
If Demelza was taken aback by how he had phrased his question, she did not show it. Her smile was almost beatific.
“I feel like I can want and want and want,” she said. “You?”
Yes, thought Arris, and his whole soul felt like an exhale.
“That’s exactly how I feel.”
“You looked slack-jawed and dazed,” observed Yvlle. “To be clear, I imagine this is very appealing for the contestant hoping for a husband who will soon be dead so she may take all his wealth and power.”
“I am dazed with the exuberance of being alive, my beloved sister.”
“Not this again.”
“It’s what happens when someone makes an attempt on one’s life,” said Arris. “And one is granted the wisdom and perspective to see one’s life anew.”
The two of them were walking back from the tranquility pond. Demelza had melted into the crowd of contestants. A few were still visiting the pavilions, but most of them were on the walkway, speaking in scandalized voices of how Thalassa, Pearl and Oona had been eliminated from the competition.
“When?”
“What did they do?”
“How did he find out?”
Arris was only half-listening, and thus he nearly crashed into a young woman on their path.
“My apologies!” he said.
The girl turned and Arris recognized Talvi.
“Your Highnesses,” she said. She curtsied to Arris and Yvlle, then lifted her chin at Yvlle. As if daring her to be hostile once more.
“I hope you find no fault in my dress today,” said Talvi.
She was simply attired in a loose gown that looked, upon closer inspection, as if it was made of sheared black ice. At first Arris thought the gown was adorned with blown glass beads or finely milled onyx, but it was in fact little beads of condensation that dripped and rolled this way and that.
“Fitting dress for a funeral,” said Yvlle. “Are you planning his in the near future?”
Talvi laughed, which only seemed to annoy Yvlle more.
“I wore this because I wished to visit the pavilion of the dusk deer and I did not want to dress so brightly as to startle them away,” said Talvi.
“I think you look exquisite,” offered Arris, but neither of them seemed to hear him.
“Ah yes, the ever diminutive dusk deer,” said Yvlle.
The dusk deer lived in a pavilion where a precise hour of time had been sewn into the trees, the leaves and the clouds.
Dusk deer had once flourished all over the Isle, gently nibbling the dregs of nighttime off the grass and waking up the land.
But their numbers dwindled when people began to notice the curious abilities of the dusk deers’ pelts to blend into the night and soak up the sunshine such that in the dark, one need only possess the creature’s pelt and they would no longer be lost. Their skins became precious exports and they were hunted until they no longer existed in the wild.
Now they were a beloved attraction for those who visited the royal menagerie.
The dusk deer were famously calm, and if one grabbed a tuft of nighttime off the grass, the deer were docile enough to eat out of one’s palms.
“I don’t find them diminutive,” said Talvi. “In fact, I find them ferocious.”
“You must have led a very sheltered existence indeed,” said Yvlle. “Were you raised in a dollhouse, by chance?”
Talvi stepped forward. “All that night sees, they consume. They are not scared. They crush it between their teeth. They might be docile, but do not ignore their appetite for destruction. They are night’s greatest enemy, after all.”
Arris grinned and started clapping. “Beautifully reasoned.”
Talvi smiled and then bowed her head. “Good day, Your Highnesses.”
Yvlle was speechless. Arris was delighted.
“Remember a few minutes ago how you were observing that I appeared slack-jawed and dazed? Well—”
Yvlle held up her hand. “This is not that. That little ice doll annoys me. Meanwhile, you seem to be in the first flush of love … but with whom, might I ask?”
Arris only smiled. His daydreams had a rabid quality to them, an effect most likely attributed to the fact that he had only narrowly escaped being eaten.
Maybe it was all nothing but a burst of frantic energy, but Arris enjoyed how it conjured visions of the future with every contestant who crossed his path.
When Aster kissed his cheek, she tucked a sylke flower into the buttonhole of his jacket so that he might think of her, and Arris pictured her walking down an aisle toward him, borne aloft by the ethereal sylke blooms of her wedding bouquet.
Miella smelled of honey and cinnamon, and Arris imagined that perhaps each year they would exchange pots of honey.
Eyolda reminded him of a lissome shadow, and he imagined following her into the dark.
Zanaza’s charming laugh rang in his ears long after she walked away, and he dreamt of a child sounding like her.
He thought of tracing his finger down the curious scar of Flykra’s neck and Heka’s warm breath on his cheek and what it would feel like to touch the pink silk of Edmea’s hair.
Arris wanted, wanted, wanted.