He suggested, “You kept the light on when you left the house.”
No. He wasn’t funny. She would not dignify that either. Somewhere in the middle of her glare, she started to smile. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You fed the bats in your belfry? You went crazier than a shit-house rat.”
“What?” Laughter burbled out of her. It felt strange, ebullient and light. She could not remember the last time she had laughed out loud, or why.
“I know, they’re too long to say in the middle of a sentence,” he said with a grin. “I’m brainstorming here. You were just showing your Vegas, baby.”
“You know, the word ‘episode’ doesn’t seem so bad anymore,” she said, still laughing. “I think we should stick with simple English.”
“All right,” Rune said. His warm gaze lingered on her, the expression in them caressing. “Tell me about when you cracked out.”
Cracked . . . She tried to glare at him again but she had lost the ability. The laughter had swept it away, along with her exhaustion and the lingering weight of discouragement.
Then she sobered as she thought back to earlier that day, and Rune put a hand on her knee. Maybe he did it to offer comfort or encouragement. He seemed to like touching her. He did it so often. The weight of his hand was warm through the caftan, his long callused fingers cupping the joint of her knee. She decided she liked the feeling of his hand on her knee too. She allowed it to remain where it was. For now.
“I was reading,” she said. “I put the book down and looked outside at the fading sunlight. Then I felt my Power flare. That’s what I call it, anyway.”
He murmured, “You said it happens whenever you go into a fade.”
“Yes. I never experienced menopause, but I wonder sometimes if hot flashes might be a little like that. It’s a good warning sign. If I can respond quickly enough, I can sometimes stave off an episode.”
“Why do you suppose pain helps?”
“I’m not sure. The shock of it seems to snap me back into sync, at least for a while.” She looked at him and bit her lip. “All right, I’ll confess. Maybe I didn’t want to tell you about the Power flares, or how the island seems to appear and disappear when it happens, because I didn’t want you to change your mind and leave. I don’t honestly know how safe it is to be around me when it happens. That is why everybody else has left, except for Rhoswen.”
“Can they sense what is happening?” Rhoswen couldn’t, but he didn’t know how much of a yardstick she might be for this. Not only did she have relatively little Power or magic, she was also young.
“No one has ever admitted to it.” Carling closed her eyes. “It frightens them.”
“Well, good riddance to them.” His hand tightened on her. His gaze remained rock-steady. “But I’m not going to leave. I’m just glad you’re telling me now. Go on.”
That look in his eyes pulled on her more powerfully than anything else she could remember. It made promises she had never heard before, things like he was unafraid and would stand by her, that she could rely on him no matter what.
It said she was worth fighting for.
She did not know if she believed that, but something burned at the back of her eyes at the thought that he might. She put her hands over his, her fingers squeezing tightly. “So my Power flared and I disassociated from reality. Do you remember how I said sometimes I go into the past, and sometimes I don’t know where I go?”
He nodded. His stance and expression didn’t change, but somehow his attention sharpened.
She said, “Today I went into the past. I keep cycling through early memories. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they held such defining moments for me. Maybe there isn’t a reason and it just happens.”
He murmured, “Tell me about that early memory.”
“Does it matter?” She cocked her head, studying him as much as he studied her.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Fair enough.” She shrugged. “I went back to when I was a child. I lived in a small village on the Nile. It was a very simple, primitive, poor life. We lived and breathed the cycles of the river. We fished and dried what we caught, and we planted and harvested grain. We were a day’s walk from Memphis. Of course it wasn’t called Memphis then.”
Rune whispered, “Ineb Hedj.”
“Yes.” Surprised, she gave him a smile. Sometimes it was an unutterable comfort to talk to other creatures at least as old as she was. So many things that had happened to her had occurred so long ago they had disappeared from history itself. They had become distant to her, like words on a page, a story that had happened to someone else, but this time she let herself drift back in actual memory as she said, “That day was quite eventful. I met a god and my life changed forever.”
Rune appeared frozen. His hand was rigid as stone. Only his lips moved as he repeated, “You met a god.”
“I was helping to harvest barley when I saw a giant winged lion flying overhead,” she murmured. “He shone copper and gold in the pale morning light. He was so beautiful I felt as if my soul left my body as I watched him, and he had the head of an eagle. . . .” Her gaze widened on Rune. “Of course,” she whispered. “Of course he was a gryphon.”
His eyes were too full of the things he was feeling, a wildness and joy when she mentioned flight, and a certain sense of tragedy she couldn’t begin to comprehend. Bewildered, she watched his throat move as he swallowed. He said, “It was me, Carling.”
She stared at him. “How can you know that for sure? It happened thousands of years ago. You were the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I had never imagined anything like you, but to you, I was just another human child. I had to have been so forgettable.”
“Khepri,” he said. His voice was soft. “You were never at any time in your life forgettable.”
The sadness in his expression wrenched at her. She leaned toward him, touching his arm. “What is it, what’s wrong?”
“Never mind that now,” he said. “This is your story. It’s important you tell it.”
“All right.” She frowned but continued, “I don’t remember much else about our encounter. I remember the color of your hair. It shone golden in the sun, like the lion. You were very large and strange, and we talked for a while, but I was pretty much in shock and I didn’t retain any of what we said to each other. Then you left.”
He looked down at their hands. “Do you remember how I left?”
“No,” she said. “Did you take flight again? I wish I’d remembered that.”
He shook his head but remained silent. He rubbed his thumb lightly against the edge of her kneecap and appeared to be concentrating on the small movement.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “That same day soldiers from the city harvested our village for slaves. They took the young, the healthy and the pretty, and they killed anyone who tried to stop them. I saw them kill my father. It was terrible, of course. I was maybe seven years old. But I’ve had a long time to get over it, and the brutal fact is, I might have lived and died a very short life in the river mud if I hadn’t somehow been taken out of it. I never forgot seeing you flying overhead though.”
He nodded, his head bent. After a moment he asked, “What made you change your name?”
She gave an impatient shrug. “I took my freedom and I took control of my life, and then I took control of my identity as well. I wanted a more modern name, something that was wholly my own creation. Carling wasn’t that far off from Khepri, so it made the transition easy. One day it was time to bury that little slave girl. It actually was a bit of a relief.”
His mouth tightened. “I wish I could have stayed to help you and your family.”
She frowned. What had she said? He looked like he was in pain. “As I said, it happened a very long time ago.”