6. Khiann
KHIANN
He was in the garden. He did not arrive at it but was simply there, standing between two rows of green plants that gave off a sharp, clean scent when the air stirred. Vegetables, and beyond them flowers, and beyond those, trees.
He knew the things in the garden by sight, but not by name. He knew the colors, but could not name them either. His hands appeared solid when he held them up, and there was even dirt under one nail, which was a surprisingly realistic detail for hands that belonged to a spectral body.
When he lowered them, he could not tell whether they were still there.
That was how these strange dreams worked, as he had learned from the one with the carriages and the petals falling from the roofs. Some crucial details were always missing, so even though he could make sense of the dreams, he was always left with unanswered questions.
There was a house behind him, with a green kitchen door that stood open, and a woman walked out, but she did not live in that house. She was a visitor. He was not sure how he knew that, but it was a certainty he did not feel the need to argue with.
The woman was very small, wearing something shapeless and brown.
The fabric looked coarse, and dirt lined the hem where it had dragged on the ground because it was too long for her small frame.
Her hair was covered with the same ugly brown fabric, marking her as a servant, but her disguise did not fool him.
Whatever the cloth did not cover was emitting a glow so bright that it illuminated the path ahead of her.
She walked toward him in her servant's garb, glowing like a lamp, and behind her in the kitchen an old man stood at a table with a large wooden spoon in his hand.
He did not see the glow because his eyes were covered in a white film, which explained why he was not bowing to the goddess passing through his kitchen, and why she was not bothering to dim her glow despite hiding behind a servant's disguise.
She knew the human cook could not see her, and there was no one in the garden she felt the need to hide her identity from.
A second woman came out after her, and she was twice the size of the little one, but she did not glow, and she looked frightened.
He could smell her fear, sour and green. She stopped at the door, not because she wanted to, but because something was holding her back, and as the door began to close on her, she stood in the narrowing gap, with worry on her face.
He wanted to reassure her, to tell her that she should not be afraid and that everything would turn out all right, but he realized that even if she could see him, he could not know whether his words were true.
He was a ghost in this dream, a spectator in someone else's life, and he did not know how it was going to unfold.
The small, glowing woman strolled through the garden, and he walked beside her, but she did not see him or even sense him. She kept going, and as she passed the vegetables and then the flowers, the smell shifted from sharp to sweet to something that did not belong outdoors.
Incense.
Someone was burning incense in the garden. It didn’t make any sense, but it was just a dream, so he chose to ignore the oddity in favor of watching the little goddess. He was absolutely absorbed in her.
Somewhere ahead was a bench of pale stone, sitting under one of the trees that had only leaves and no fruit, but no matter how long he and the little goddess walked, they were not getting any closer to it.
A young man appeared next to the bench, materializing out of thin air. His face was turned away, but something about him felt familiar.
As he appeared, the distance collapsed, and they were standing beside him.
The goddess sat down on the bench, but the young man did not, and they began to argue.
He could hear their voices but not the words. He caught pieces. He caught the word 'war,' which he understood, and something about a father, and something about a bad promise that had been made. The young man tried to sound reasonable, but the goddess would not listen.
“You are too tall for me to reach. If I am to kiss you, you need to sit down.”
The young man’s bottom dropped on the bench before she finished her sentence.
She approached him, sat on his lap, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I think this will work.” Pulling on his neck, she brought his head down.
“Command me to kiss you,” the young god said.
“Khiann son of Navohn, I command you to kiss me.”
He felt the kiss as if the goddess was kissing him.
He could feel her mouth and her body pressed against his as if he was the young god, and the small sounds she made were having an effect on him that belonged to the other male.
He felt his fangs emerge and struggled to keep them hidden, but they were not his fangs. They were the god's.
He was still standing three paces away, hidden in the trees, watching something private that did not belong to him and feeling stolen sensations that did not belong to him either.
The kiss lasted an eternity, and when it finally ended, the young god walked away while the bright goddess remained, her fingers pressed against her mouth.
More than anything, he wanted to be the tall god walking away with something enormous in his heart, but he was not. He was a specter, an onlooker, standing in a strange garden that was already fading.
The trees were gone first, then the flowerbeds, and then the incense dissipated.
The bright goddess was the last of it.
She stayed after the bench and the path were gone, sitting on nothing in the middle of the dark. She turned her head and looked in his direction. At him. She couldn't possibly see him, could she?
He had no body.
He was nothing, and no one could see him, not in this dream, and not in the one before it. That was the rule.
And yet, she looked right at him.
He tried to say something, but nothing came out.
It grew dark, and the darkness swallowed what was left of the garden, including the bright goddess.
His eyes popped open, and the darkness was replaced by a white light.
He was in the strange room again, the one with the humming machines and the smooth ceiling with lights embedded in it. He knew that if he turned his head to the left, there would be two more beds, and if he turned it to the right, there would be two on that side as well.
He lay still and waited for the dream to drain out of him. It was going to happen whether he wanted it or not, and he was sorry to see it go, but being sorry did not change the inevitable or slow it down.
The bright woman was in the room, and he wondered if she was the goddess from the dream. He did not see her, but he did not need to. He could feel her radiant warmth whenever she was near and could feel its absence when she was not.
She was over to the left of him, at the far end, talking to the male in the last bed. Her voice was exquisite, the finest of music, but he still could not make out the words.
He had heard her say the same words over and over again, the same run of sounds in the same order in the same voice, and he had stopped trying to understand them.
"Good morning. I am…"
Khiann stopped breathing.
"I am Annani, daughter of Ahn and Nai. You are among friends, and you are safe."
It was not just a run of sounds anymore. He understood what she had just said.
He lay there with his eyes on the ceiling, motionless, certain that if he moved it would fade, the way the garden had faded, the way everything did.
She said it again, and he understood it again.
She said it a third time, and he understood every word, noticing the brief pause she made before her father's name, as though the name were supposed to mean something to whoever heard it.
She was proud to be Ahn's daughter.
Annani.
The goddess in the garden had not said her name, but he knew the name belonged to her.
Annani, daughter of Ahn and Nai.
She was the bright goddess wearing a servant's brown dress, and she was the bride in the carriage, and she was also the voice in the dark who had spoken to him and painted stories in his mind.
He felt something on his hand. Something that had not been there before.
A weight, a band of something around the thumb of his left hand, and he was sure it had not been there the last time he had surfaced.
He moved the thumb.
The band moved with it, turning loose all the way around, and he could feel the inside of it slide past the pad of his finger. There was something carved into it. He could feel the faint ridges passing under his skin.
He turned it again and thought about the young god in the garden and about the goddess standing on a bench to reach his face. He could not make the two things fit together, and he was not certain they were supposed to.
Then she returned and stopped beside his bed. She leaned over him, so beautiful that it took him a moment to hear what she was saying.
She was small and blazing, and her hair fell forward over her shoulder and hung between them. She was worried. It showed in her mouth and in the way she held herself.
"Good morning, my love," she said.
He understood.
"You have been asleep for three hours," she said. "The healer says that you are doing exceptionally well, and I have told her that this does not surprise me because you have always been exceptional in every way."
He understood every word.
She kept talking. She told him the chests had been cleaned out and that things had been found at the bottom. She said the word for rings, and he understood that too, all of it, one word after another after another.
She took his hand between both of hers, moving her thumb over the band on his thumb.
She had put it there.
"You are looking at me as if you understand me," she said. "Can you understand me?"
He tried to answer her, but nothing came. His throat worked, his jaw moved, and the room stayed as quiet as it had been.
"Squeeze my hand if you understand me."