For some time, neither did he.
And so he lay there, as he had lain there since he had awoken. It wasn’t that he couldn’t rise. He felt light, unbearably so, as though he might be carried away with whatever tide wasn’t there that carried the rays so effortlessly through the starshine.
But standing seemed a daunting prospect.
“You can get up now.”
Daunting as it was, though, he looked up from the sand, stared past his chest, past his stomach, between his feet. She sat not far away, beneath the stare of the stars, beneath the envy of a frond of wafting, purple kelp.
Light and shadow painted her. The naked skin of her shoulders glowed silver against the light, twisting against the black bands encircling her, spitefully chasing the starlight away as the starlight chased it, in turn.
Like the rays.
He could see her eyes. They were bright and green, like a thing that shouldn’t be growing down here in the dark. They weren’t looking at him. She stared at the sand. Her ears twitched, she pointed to them.
“It’s how I know,” she said. “You breathe differently when you sleep and when you’re awake. I can hear it.” She smiled sadly. “I know that about you.”
He came to his feet. It was hard. The earth kept moving beneath him and the sky was going the opposite way overhead. He stood between them, trying to keep his balance, trying not to get dizzy as he stared at her and her shadows and her light.
“Is that you in there?” She tapped her temple.
“Yeah,” he said. His words felt too light on his lips, like he knew he would need the breath he was giving away for them.
She nodded.
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Do you believe me?”
She looked at him now. Her eyes flashed, stared past him, through him, around him. The color was too much, too bright, too vivid, too full of. . something. It threw him, upset the balance of light and black. He swayed, did not fall.
He stared back.
Did not blink.
“I shot my brother,” she said. “I stepped over my sister’s body.” She turned back to the sand.
“For me?”
“Not for you. Not entirely. They were something I wasn’t. You were when I realized it.”
“Why?” He felt a pain in his neck, the question hurt to speak.
She shook her head.
“You’re all I have left.”
The pain grew sharper, twisted in his throat at the question he dreaded to ask, the answer he was terrified to hear.
“What if that’s a mistake?”
She looked at him. Her eyes were no less bright as they hardened.
She rose. She stood before him. The stars painted shifting stripes across her face, turned it into a mask of silver and black. Her hair drifted in a breeze that wasn’t there, licking against the lobes of her ears, sending them twitching.
Her belly rose and fell with each breath. The shadows moved with her, tracing the contours of her muscle, drawing a circle of perfect pitch about her navel. The finer hairs of her body shone translucent beneath the silver, alight where the shadow’s hands did not slide across her belly as it rose, gently; fell, gently.
She breathed. She lived. Her body moved as the earth moved and the sky moved and the world moved and everything moved around him.
Except her eyes.
So he stared into them. And he clung to them to keep from falling.
“Then I’ll keep beating you unconscious until it isn’t,” she said.
She stood there. Her body trembled. Her eyes did not. She waited for him to do something. For him to fall dead at her feet. For him to kill her instead. For him to turn away and leave and fade into something else entirely.
The silence hurt his ears. There was something in his mind, something he had trouble hearing. It had no words. It had no language.
He stepped forward, just to hear the sand crunch beneath his feet. And at that moment, the world moved a little too much one way, the sky too much the other. He fell.
And he felt her as she caught him. He felt the shudder of her breath against his chest. He felt the chill of her shadows slithering over him.
“I’m tired,” he whispered. “I am. . very tired.”
And she could feel it. She felt the groan of muscles that struggled to keep him on his feet. She felt the murmur of a heart in his chest flowing warm and weary in his chest.
“You need to rest,” she whispered.
“I need. .”
She could hear his voice. She could hear a quaver that wasn’t there anymore. She could hear a sigh that was on every breath.
“I need. .”
She could hear his body. She heard the slide of flesh as his arm wrapped around her. She heard the desperation in his grip as his hand pressed against the naked small of her back. She heard the crunch of cloth as he pressed her belly against his.
“I. .”
No more voices.
No more language.
He leaned into her to keep from falling, pressed his lips against hers to keep from being carried away.
Nothing was left to hear.
She felt him now.
She could taste the desperation in his lips, the urgency that dripped off his tongue and onto hers. She could feel him, every part of him, everything that was left of him. In the grasp of his hand around her wrist, in the tension of muscle and the coarseness of his tunic against her belly, in the low, urgent growl that slid from his mouth into hers.
And as he poured everything he had left into her, he fell. His knees gave way beneath him and he clung to her as he slid to the sands, arms wrapped about her waist, face pressed against her skin. He clung as though there was not enough of him left to keep him on the dirt and keep him from drifting away on a tidal sky.
She said something. Something to herself, something to him, something hateful, something teary. Maybe. Maybe she said nothing. Maybe he should say something. If he had a voice anymore, he might have. If she had one, she might have.
All her language now was in her body. The protest of fine hairs standing on end in the wake of his tongue, the whisper of muscle in her stomach as it yielded to his lips, the howl in her fingers as he felt them tangle into his hair and pull.
She had no voice to make a sound. No more words. No more curses. Not so much as a moan. The slightest escape of air between lips barely parted. The world above was too far away to hear. The world below was silent as the darkness it held. There was no sound. There were no voices.
Lenk liked that.
His fingers found themselves trembling over her belt buckle. It was too complex for him now. He pulled on it, tore it free, let the leather hang limply about her waist. His fingers found the space between her skin and breeches and he pulled.
She slid out of them, watched them pool about her ankles. Maybe it was them that caused her to fall, to feel the grit of sand upon the skin of her buttocks. Maybe it was him. No use for words. She had none left.
He pulled himself on top of her, felt her hands at his belt, felt his trousers sliding from his legs. He felt her beneath his hips. He felt her thighs pressing against his. He felt her nails sinking past his tunic, into the skin of his shoulders.
He made not a sound.
She barely even breathed.
No words.
No voices.
No people.
Nothing but a shifting of shadow and stars above as he leaned into her.
She felt the breath inside her, the sudden rush of air as her mouth fell open. She saw the flash of her teeth in his eyes as he stared at her. She felt her ears flatten themselves against her head, bury themselves in the locks of her hair, pressing so hard, trembling so fiercely they hurt.
He felt the shudder of her body against his hips, the hairs on her skin stand up and reach out to the ones on his. He felt the clench of his jaw as he strove to keep back a word that had no place down here. He felt himself close his eyes and felt the shadows washing over him.