She glanced up at him with surprise, seeing Sorak’s face, his eyes gazing back at her ... yet it was not him. “Afraid? Sorak was never afraid of anything. Why would he be afraid of me?”
“Because he is male, and he is young, and because to be a young male is to be awash in insecurities and feelings one cannot fully understand,” Eyron replied. “I speak from experience, of course. I share his doubts and fears. How could I not?”
“What doubts? What fears?”
“Doubts about himself and his identity,” said Eyron. “And a fear that you might think him less of a male for having female aspects.”
“But that is absurd!”
“Nevertheless, it is true. Sorak loves you, Ryana. But he can never make love with you because our female aspects could not countenance it. You think that is not a source of torment for him?”
“No less than it is for me,” she replied. She looked at him, curiously. “What of you, Eyron? You have said nothing of how you feel about me.”
“I think of you as my friend,” said Eyron. “A very close friend. My only friend, in fact.”
“What? Do none of the others—?”
“Oh, no, I did not mean that,” said Eyron, “that is different. I meant my only friend outside the tribe. I do not make friends easily, it seems.”
“Could you countenance me as Sorak’s lover?”
“Of course. I am male, and I consider you my friend. I cannot say that I love you, but I do have feelings of affection for you. Were the decision mine alone to make—mine and Sorak’s, that is—I would have no objections. I think the two of you are good for one another. But, unfortunately, there are others to consider.”
“Yes, I know. But I am grateful for your honesty. And your expression of goodwill.”
“Oh, it is much more than goodwill, Ryana,” Eyron said. “I am very fond of you. I do not know you as well as Sorak does; none of us do, except perhaps the Guardian. And while I must confess that my nature is not the most amenable to love, I think that I could learn to share the love that Sorak feels for you.”
“I am glad to hear that,” she said.
“Well, then, perhaps I am not quite as disputatious as you think,” said Eyron.
She smiled. “Perhaps not. But there are times. . .”
“When you would like to strangle me,” Eyron completed the statement for her.
“I would not go quite that far,” she said. “Pummel you a bit, perhaps.”
“I am gratified at your restraint, then. I am not much of a fighter.”
“Eyron fears a fee-male! Eyron fears a fee-male!”
“Be quiet, Lyric!” Eyron said, in an annoyed tone.
“Nyaah-nyaah-nyahh, nyaah-nyaah-nayahh!”
Ryana had to laugh at the sudden, rapid changes that flickered across Sorak’s features. One moment, he was Eyron, the mature and self-possessed, articulate adult; in the next instant, he was Lyric, the taunting and irrepressible child.
His facial expressions, his bearing, his body language, everything changed abruptly back and forth as the two different personas alternately manifested themselves.
“I am pleased you find it so amusing,” Eyron said to her irritably.
“Nyaah-nyaah-nyaah, nyaah-nyaah-nyaah!” Lyric taunted in a high-pitched, singsong voice.
“Lyric, please,” Ryana said. “Eyron and I were having a conversation. It is not polite to interrupt when grown-ups are speaking.”
“Oh, all-riiight. . .” Lyric said dejectedly.
“He never listens to me the way he listens to you,” said Eyron, as Lyric’s pouting expression was abruptly replaced on Sorak’s face by Eyron’s wry look of annoyance.
“That is because you are impatient with him,” Ryana said with a smile. “Children always recognize the weak points in adults, and they are quick to play on them.”
“I grow impatient merely because he delights so in annoying me,” said Eyron.
“It is only a ploy to get attention,” said Ryana. “If you were to indulge him more, he would feel less need to provoke you.”
“Females are better at such things,” said Eyron.
“Perhaps. But males could do equally well if they took the time to learn,” Ryana said. “Most of them forget too easily what it was like to be a child.”
“Sorak was a child,” Eyron said. “I never was.”
Ryana sighed. “There are some things about you all that I think I shall never understand,” she said with resignation.
“It is better simply to accept some things without trying to understand them,” replied Eyron.
“I do my best,” Ryana said.
They continued talking for a while as they walked, and it helped to pass the time of their journey, but Eyron soon wearied of the trek and ducked back under, allowing the Guardian to manifest. In a way, however, the Guardian had been there all along. Like the Watcher, she was never very far beneath the surface, always present, even when one of the others had come out. As her name implied, her primary role was to act as the protector of the tribe.
She was the strong, maternal figure, sometimes interacting with the others in an active way, sometimes content to remain passive, but always there as a moderating presence, a force for balance in the inner tribe. While she was manifested, Sorak was there too as an underlying presence. If he chose to, he could speak, or else he could simply listen and observe while the Guardian interacted with Ryana. When any of the others were out, things were often slightly different. If Lyric was at the fore of their personas, he and Sorak could both be out at the same time, like two individuals awake in the same body, as was the case with Sorak and the Guardian, or Screech. But if it was Eyron, or the Ranger, or any of the others that were stronger personalities, Sorak often wasn’t there at all. At such times, he faded back into his own subconscious, and his knowledge of what occurred during the times when any of the stronger ones were out depended on the Guardian granting him access to the memories. Kivara seemed to cause him the greatest difficulty. Of all his personalities, she was the most unruly and unpredictable, and the two were frequently in conflict. If Kivara had her way, Sorak had explained, she would come out more often, but the Guardian kept her in line.
The Guardian was capable of overriding all the other personalities, Sorak’s included, save for Kether and the Shade.
And those two appeared only rarely.
It had taken Ryana ten years to become accustomed to the intricacies of the relationships of Sorak’s inner tribe. She could imagine how it would be for anyone who met Sorak for the first time. And she could understand why Sorak did not trouble to explain his curious condition to others that he met. It would only frighten people and confuse them.
Without training in the Way, it would have frightened and confused him, too. She wondered if there was any way that he could ever become normal.
“Guardian,” she said, knowing that the privacy of her own thoughts would be respected unless she invited the Guardian to look into her mind, “I have been wondering about something, but before we speak of it, I wish to make certain you do not take it amiss. It is not my desire to offend.”
“I would never think that of you,” the Guardian replied. “Speak then, and speak frankly.”
“Do you think that there is any chance Sorak could ever become normal?”
“What is normal?” the Guardian replied.
“Well . . . you know what I mean. Like everybody else.”
“Everybody else is not the same,” the Guardian replied. “What is normal for one person may not be normal for another. But I believe I understand your meaning. You wish to know if Sorak could ever become just Sorak, and not a tribe of one.”
“Yes. Not that I wish you did not exist, you understand. Well ... in a sense, I suppose I do, but it is not because of any feeling that I have against you. Any of you. It is just that... if things had been different...”