Ellemir’s voice was suddenly shaking. “Are you Terrans like the Dry-Towners, then, who keep their women behind walls and in chains so that no other man will touch them? Is she a toy you want to lock in a box so that no one else can play with it? What is marriage to you, then?”
“I don’t know,” Andrew said drearily, his anger collapsing. “I’ve never been married before. I’m not trying to quarrel with you, Elli.” He fumbled with the pet name. “I… just… well, we were talking, before, about things being strange to me, and this is one of them. To believe Callista wouldn’t be hurt…”
“If you had abandoned her, or if you had forced her to consent, unwilling — as with Dom Ruyven of Castamir, who forced Lady Crystal to harbor his barragana wife and to foster all the bastards the woman bore — then, yes, she might have cause to grieve. But can you believe it is cruelty, that you do her will?” She met his eyes, reached out, gently, and took his hand between her own. She said, “If you are suffering, Andrew, it hurts all of us. Callista too. And… and me, Andrew.”
His barriers were down. The touch, the meeting of their eyes, made him feel wholly exposed to her. No wonder she had no hesitation in simply walking around without her shift, he realized. This was the real nakedness.
He had reached that particular stage of drunkenness where preconceptions blur and people do outrageous things and believe them commonplace. He could see Ellemir, now as herself, now as Callista, now as a visible sign of a contact he was only beginning to understand, the fourway link between them. She bent and laid her mouth against his. It went through his body like a jolt of electricity. All his aching frustration was behind the strength with which he pulled her into his arms.
Is this happening, or am I drunk, and dreaming about it again? Thought blurred. He was aware of Ellemir’s body in his arms, slender, naked, confident, with that curious matter-of-fact acceptance. In a moment’s completely sober insight, he knew that this was her way of cutting off awareness of Damon too. It was not only his need, but hers. He was glad of that.
He was naked, with no memory of shedding his clothes. She was warm, pliant in his arms. Yes, she has been here before, for a moment, the four of us, blended, just before catastrophe struck,… At the back of her mind he sensed a warm, welcoming amusement: No, you are not strange to me.
Through growing excitement came a sad strange thought: It should have been Callista, Ellemir felt so different in his arms, so solid somehow, without any of the shy fragility which so excited him in Callista. Then he felt her touch, rousing him, blotting out thought. He felt memory blurring and wondered for a moment if this were her doing, so that for now the kindly haze obscured everything. He was only a feeling, reacting body, driven by long need and deprivation, aware only of an accepting, responding body in his arms, of excitement and tenderness matching his own, seeking the deliverance so long denied. When it came it was so intense that he thought he would lose consciousness.
After a time he stirred, carefully shifting his weight. She smiled and brushed her hair from his face. He felt calm, released, grateful. No, it was more than gratitude, it was a closeness, like… yes, like the moment they had met in the matrix. He said, quietly, “Ellemir.” Just a reaffirmation, a reassurance. For the moment she was clearly herself, not Callista, not anyone else. She kissed him lightly on the temple, and suddenly exhaustion and release of long denial all fell together at once, and he slept in Ellemir’s arms. An indefinable time later he woke to see Damon looking down at them.
He looked weary, haggard, and Andrew thought, in shock, that here was the best friend he had ever had, and here he was, in bed with his wife.
Ellemir sat up quickly. “Callista — ?”
Damon’s sigh seemed dragged up from the roots of his body. “She’s going to be all right. She’s asleep.” He stumbled and almost fell on top of them. Ellemir held out her arms, gathering him to her breast.
Andrew thought he was in the way there, then, sensing Damon’s exhaustion, how near the older man was to collapse, realized that his preoccupation with himself was selfish, irrelevant. Clumsily, wishing there was some way to express what he felt, he put his arm around Damon’s shoulders.
Damon sighed again, and said, “She’s better than I dared hope for. She’s very weak, of course, and exhausted. After all I put her through…” he shuddered, and Ellemir drew his head to her breasts.
“Was it so terrible, beloved?”
“Terrible, yes, terrible for her,” Damon muttered, and even then — Ellemir sensed it with heartbreak — he was trying to shield her, shield them both from the nakedness of his own memory. “She was so brave, and I wouldn’t bear having to hurt her like that.” His voice broke. He hid his face on Ellemir’s breasts and began to sob, harshly, helplessly.
Andrew thought he should leave, but Damon reached out for Andrew’s hand, clinging to it with an agonized grip. Andrew, putting aside his own discomfort at being present at such a moment, thought that right now Damon needed all the comfort he could get. He only said very softly, when Damon had quieted, “Should I be with Callista?”
Damon caught the overtone in the words: You and Ellemir would rather be alone. In his worn, raw-edged state it was painful, a rebuff. His words were sharp with exhaustion.
“She won’t know whether you’re there or not. But do as you damn please!” and the unspoken part of his words were as plain as what he said aloud: If you just can’t wait to get away from us.
He still doesn’t understand …
Damon, how could he? Ellemir hardly understood herself. She only knew that when Damon was like this it was painful, exhausting. His need was so much greater than she could meet or comfort in any way. Her own inadequacy tormented her. It was not sexual — that she could have understood and eased — but what she sensed in Damon left her exhausted and helpless because it was not any recognizable need which she could understand. Some of her desperation came through to Andrew, though all she said was, “Please stay. I think he wants us both with him now.”
Damon, clinging to them both with a desperate, sinking need for physical contact which was not, though it simulated, the real need he felt, thought, No, they don’t understand. And, more rationally, I don’t understand it either. For the moment it was enough that they were there. It wasn’t complete, it wasn’t what he needed, but for the moment he could make it do, and Ellemir, holding him close in despair, thought that they could calm him a little, like this. But what was it he really needed? Would she ever know? She wondered. How could she know when he didn’t know himself?
Chapter Twelve
Callista woke and lay with her eyes closed, feeling the sun on her eyelids. In the night, through her sleep, she had felt the storm cease, the snow stop, and the clouds disappear. This morning the sun was out. She stretched her body, savoring the luxury of being wholly without pain. She still felt weak, drained, though it now seemed to her that she had slept for two or three whole days without intermission, after that dreadful ordeal. Afterward she had remained abed for a few days, recovering her strength, although she felt quite well. She knew that the first thing necessary was to recover her health, which, always before, had been excellent, and it would take time.
And when she was well, what then? But she caught herself. If she began to fret about that, she would have no peace.